Stability and unsteadiness of transitional shock-wave/boundary-layer interactions in supersonic flows

Abstract

The aim of this research is to study the effect of transition location on the interaction between an oblique shock-wave and a boundary-layer. A large set of direct and large eddy simulations are performed with an in-house high-order fully-parallelised finite difference compressible Navier-Stokes solver to study the inherent instability and unsteady behaviour of laminar, transitional and turbulent interactions. The numerical simulations are compared with the experiments conducted at the Novosibirsk State University as part of the EU-FP7 TFAST project, providing a better understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of the shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction (SWBLI). As well as the characteristics of the interactions, interest is also focused on methods to control the transition location. Three distinct forcing techniques are used to obtain different transition scenarios for a laminar SWBLI at free-stream Mach number of 1.5. An oblique mode breakdown caused by forcing the most unstable eigenmodes, predicted by the local linear stability theory, is compared with a bypass-like transition due to high-amplitude free-stream acoustic disturbances. A non-thermal plasma flow actuation device is also used, however showing a low applicability to supersonic flows due to the high electric power required to trigger transition. Attention is also focused on the response of a laminar shock-induced separation bubble. For both 2D and 3D configurations, a low-frequency response is found for the first time in a laminar SWBLI, even when the separation bubble is only forced internally, therefore supporting the idea that the separated region is influenced by internal mechanisms. The SWBLI is further analysed via linear and nonlinear stability approaches, including local stability theory or parabolised stability equations based tools. The response of the separated region for increasing shock intensities is studied and the stability based tools provide satisfactory results even for largely separated boundary-layers

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ORCID for N. Sandham: orcid.org/0000-0002-5107-0944

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