Shock-induced heating and transition to turbulence in a hypersonic boundary layer

TL;DR

This study investigates shock-induced transition to turbulence in a hypersonic boundary layer at Mach-6 using DNS and WMLES, revealing how shock angle influences transition, heat transfer, and flow separation.

Contribution

It demonstrates that high shock angles cause turbulence transition without free-stream disturbances and evaluates WMLES accuracy in predicting thermomechanical loads.

Findings

Transition occurs via streak breakdown at high shock angles.

Peak thermomechanical loads increase linearly with shock incidence.

WMLES predicts DNS results within ±10% at lower computational cost.

Abstract

The interaction between an incident shock wave and a Mach-6 undisturbed hypersonic laminar boundary layer over a cold wall is addressed using direct numerical simulations (DNS) and wall-modeled large-eddy simulations (WMLES) at different angles of incidence. At sufficiently high shock-incidence angles, the boundary layer transitions to turbulence via breakdown of near-wall streaks shortly downstream of the shock impingement, without the need of any inflow free-stream disturbances. The transition causes a localized significant increase in the Stanton number and skin-friction coefficient, with high incidence angles augmenting the peak thermomechanical loads in an approximately linear way. Statistical analyses of the boundary layer downstream of the interaction for each case are provided that quantify streamwise spatial variations of the Reynolds analogy factors and indicate a breakdown of the Morkovin's hypothesis near the wall, where velocity and temperature become correlated. A modified strong Reynolds analogy with a fixed turbulent Prandtl number is observed to perform best. Conventional transformations fail at collapsing the mean velocity profiles on the incompressible log law. The WMLES prompts transition and peak heating, delays separation, and advances reattachment, thereby shortening the separation bubble. When the shock leads to transition, WMLES provides predictions of DNS peak thermomechanical loads within $\pm 10\%$ at a computational cost lower than DNS by two orders of magnitude. Downstream of the interaction, in the turbulent boundary layer, WMLES agrees well with DNS results for the Reynolds analogy factor, the mean profiles of velocity and temperature, including the temperature peak, and the temperature/velocity correlation.