On a supersonic-sonic patch arising from the Frankl problem in transonic flows

TL;DR

This paper constructs a smooth transonic flow patch solution for the 2D steady Euler equations, demonstrating global existence, regularity, and the structure of sonic curves in a transonic flow over an airfoil.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to establish the existence and regularity of a supersonic-sonic patch in transonic flows using characteristic decompositions and hodograph transformations.

Findings

Global existence and regularity of the solution are proven.

The sonic curve's regularity is verified.

A new approach to solving the Frankl problem in transonic flow is developed.

Abstract

We construct a supersonic-sonic smooth patch solution for the two dimensional steady Euler equations in gas dynamics. This patch is extracted from the Frankl problem in the study of transonic flow with local supersonic bubble over an airfoil. Based on the methodology of characteristic decompositions, we establish the global existence and regularity of solutions in a partial hodograph coordinate system in terms of angle variables. The original problem is solved by transforming the solution in the partial hodograph plane back to that in the physical plane. Moreover, the uniform regularity of the solution and the regularity of an associated sonic curve are also verified.