ADVANCED GROUND TESTING AND SIMULATION OF THE BOUNDARY LAYER TRANSITION (BOLT) FLIGHT EXPERIMENT
Abstract
Knowledge of transition and subsequent growth of turbulent boundary layers on hypersonic vehicles is essential to designing for the heat loads that need to be managed on vehicular surfaces. It is well established that the transition/post-transition region in hypersonic flows often have the highest heat loading; thus making it necessary to predict where this phenomenon will occur. The ability to predict hypersonic transition, particularly over non-simple geometries remains a challenge. The Boundary Layer Transition (BOLT) flight experiments will provide a better understanding of the transition and turbulent boundary layer growth phenomena. This project will undertake ground testing in high enthalpy shock tunnels: T4 at The University of Queensland (UQ) and X3R managed by the Australian Defense Science and Technology Group (DSTG), alongside numerical modelling. The aim is to provide a complementary set of ground test results to work undertaken at other facilities in the U.S. at Mach 6 and 7 flight trajectory relevant conditions to study the growth of turbulence in the boundary layer. Leveraging previous work undertaken at the Centre for Hypersonics at UQ, this project will also attempt electrically heating sections of the model in order to simulate the natural frictional heating to study the effect of hot walls on the growth of turbulence. A novel array of thin-film, platinum heat transfer gauges will be used to gather higher temporal resolution data to discern the formation of turbulent structures and their growth. Full-scale model tests will be undertaken at the X3R reflected shock-tunnel at the DSTG’s secure hypersonics precinct in Brisbane, Australia. This project will also explore the usage of UQ’s in-house hypersonic solver Eilmer for both RANS + conjugate heat transfer simulations to inform the heated model experiments as well as estimating growth of turbulence in the boundary layer using its under-development DNS modelling capabilities.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 11, 2021
- Source ID
- FA23862014056
Entities
People
- Ananthanarayanan Veeraragavan
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- United States Air Force
- University of Queensland