Shock Wave Interaction in Hypervelocity Flow. Appendix C.

Abstract

The interaction of a weak oblique shock with the strong bow shock ahead of a blunt body in supersonic flow produces extreme heat transfer rates and surface pressures. Although the problem has been studied extensively in low enthalpy flows, the influences of high enthalpy real gas effects are poorly understood. Existing perfect gas models predict greatly increased heating with increasing Mach number and decreasing ratio of specific heats. Experiments are conducted in a free piston shock tunnel to determine the effects of thermochemistry on the problem at high enthalpy. The flow topology is simplified by studying the nominally two dimensional flow about a cylinder with a coplanar impinging shock wave. High resolution holographic interferometry is used to investigate changes in the flow structure as the location of the impinging shock wave is varied. Fast response heat transfer gauges provide time resolved measurements of the model surface temperature. The data that are obtained do not support the existing predictions of greatly increased heat transfer at high enthalpy. A model is developed to study the thermochemical processes occurring in the interaction region. The phenomenon arises because the stagnation streamline is forced to pass through a system of oblique shock waves that produce less entropy than the undisturbed bow shock. Peak heating is shown to result from a balancing of the strengths of the oblique shock waves. This condition is demonstrated to simultaneously minimize the influence of thermochemistry on the flow. Real gas effects are shown to become important at lower Mach numbers (< 7.5) and for shock angles weaker or stronger than that which produces maximum heating. The model accurately reproduces the experimental observations.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 02, 1996
Accession Number
ADA306379

Entities

People

  • Simon R. Anderson

Organizations

  • California Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundary Layer
  • Chemical Reactions
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Differential Equations
  • Flow Visualization
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Geometry
  • Heat Transfer
  • Hydrodynamics
  • Hypervelocity Flow
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Shock Tunnels
  • Three Dimensional
  • Turbulent Mixing
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Atmospheric Science / Meteorology, specifically Wind Wave Turbulence.
  • Combustion and Flow Dynamics.
  • Fluid Dynamics.

Technology Areas

  • Hypersonics
  • Hypersonics - Hypersonic Boundary Layers
  • Hypersonics - Hypersonic Flow