Development of Disturbances in the Supersonic Boundary Layer under Helium Injection from the Surface

Experiments on the influence of distributed injection of helium on the development of the supersonic boundary layer unstable disturbances have been performed. It is revealed, that injection of helium in a certain range of blowing mass flow rate, leads to a certain decrease of spatial amplification rates of natural disturbances.

Control of laminar breakdown in a supersonic boundary layer employing streaks

In this study direct numerical simulations are employed to investigate the effects of various parameters on the laminar-flow-control capabilities of narrowly spaced streaks in a supersonic boundary layer at Mach $2.0$ . Previous work by Sharma et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 873, 2019, pp. 1072–1089) has found these streak modes, excited by a spanwise blowing-and-suction strip, to be highly effective at delaying pure oblique-type breakdown. In the present work it is shown that spectrum-enriching subharmonic modes, relevant with increasing running-length Reynolds number, do not destroy the controlling mechanism, and also a complex breakdown scenario, triggered by a multi-frequency point source, is found to be effectively controlled. Moreover, the control-streak excitation by roughness elements is compared in detail with the blowing-and-suction method, revealing relevant differing features.

Experimental investigation of supersonic boundary-layer tripping with a spanwise pulsed spark discharge array

In this paper, a pulsed spark discharge plasma actuator array is deployed to control laminar–turbulent transition in a Mach 3.0 flat-plate boundary layer, and the subtle flow structures are visualized by nanoparticle planar laser scattering (NPLS) technique. Results show that the onset location of turbulence can be brought upstream by plasma actuation, corresponding to forced boundary-layer transition. Hairpin vortex packets evolved from the thermal bulbs play a vital role in the breakdown of laminar flow. With the help of a machine learning tool, all the relevant structures induced by plasma actuation are extracted from NPLS images, and a conceptual model of the hairpin vortex generation is proposed, including three stages: production and lift-up of the high-vorticity region, formation of the $\varLambda$ vortex and evolution of the hairpin vortex.

Numerical simulation of the interaction of the disturbed boundary layer with an incident shock

Interaction of the disturbed supersonic boundary layer with an incident oblique shock wave is studied numerically with eddy-resolving numerical simulations. Eigenmodes of the linear stability theory are used to generate the inflow boundary layer disturbances. The evolution of unstable boundary-layer disturbances, effects of the incident shock on the disturbances, effects of the disturbances on the boundary layer separation, flow dynamics in the separation zone, and laminar-turbulent transition are studied.

Numerical Simulation of Disturbance Evolution in the Supersonic Boundary Layer over an Expansion Corner

Abstract— The linear and nonlinear stages of disturbance development in the supersonic boundary layer over a 10° expansion corner is investigated numerically within the framework of Navier—Stokes equations for Mach number 3. The effect of sudden flow expansion on the disturbance evolution is analyzed. The flow stabilization effect observable in the aerodynamic experiment is also discussed.

Receptivity of inviscid modes in supersonic boundary layers to wall perturbations

The present paper investigates the receptivity of inviscid first and second modes in a supersonic boundary layer to time-periodic wall disturbances in the form of local blowing/suction, streamwise velocity perturbation and temperature perturbation, all introduced via a small forcing slot on the flat plate. The receptivity is studied using direct numerical simulations (DNS), finite- and high-Reynolds-number approaches, which complement each other. The finite-Reynolds-number formulation predicts the receptivity as accurately as DNS, but does not give much insight to the detailed excitation process, nor can it explain the significantly weaker receptivity efficiency of the streamwise velocity and temperature perturbations relative to the blowing/suction. In order to shed light on these issues, an asymptotic analysis was performed in the limit of large Reynolds number. It shows that the receptivity to all three forms of wall perturbations is reduced to the same mathematical form: the Rayleigh equation subject to an equivalent suction/blowing velocity, which can be expressed explicitly in terms of the physical wall perturbations. Estimates of the magnitude of the excited eigenmode can be made a priori for each case. Furthermore, the receptivity efficiencies for the streamwise velocity and temperature perturbations are quantitatively related to that for the blowing/suction by simple ratios, which are of $$O(R^{-1/2})$$ O ( R - 1 / 2 ) and have simple expressions, where R is the Reynolds number based on the boundary-layer thickness at the centre of the forcing slot. The simple leading-order asymptotic theory predicts the instability and receptivity characteristics accurately for sufficiently large Reynolds numbers (about $$10^4$$ 10 4 ), but appreciable error exists for moderate Reynolds numbers. An improved asymptotic theory is developed by using the appropriate impedance condition that accounts for the $$O(R^{-1/2})$$ O ( R - 1 / 2 ) transverse velocity induced by the viscous motion in the Stokes layer adjacent to the wall. The improved theory predicts both the instability and receptivity at moderate Reynolds numbers ($$R=O(10^3)$$ R = O ( 10 3 ) ) with satisfactory accuracy. In particular, it captures well the finite-Reynolds-number effects, including the Reynolds-number dependence of the receptivity and the strong excitation occurring near the so-called synchronisation point.