Compressible flow in front of an axisymmetric blunt object

TL;DR

This paper presents an analytical method to accurately model compressible flow in front of axisymmetric blunt objects, covering subsonic, transonic, and supersonic regimes, validated against measurements and simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a low order expansion approach for analytical flow modeling around blunt objects, improving accuracy across various flow regimes.

Findings

Analytical model matches experimental and simulation data.

Accurately captures bow shock properties.

Effective across subsonic to supersonic flows.

Abstract

Compressible flows around blunt objects have diverse applications, but present analytic treatments are inaccurate and limited to narrow parameter regimes. We show that the flow in front of an axisymmetric body is accurately derived analytically using a low order expansion of the perpendicular gradients in terms of the parallel velocity. This reproduces both subsonic and supersonic flows measured and simulated for a sphere, including the transonic regime and the bow shock properties.