Understanding and Predicting Shockwave and Turbulent Boundary Layer Interactions

Book excerpt: Shockwave and turbulent boundary layer interactions produce intense localized pressure loads and heating rates that can have a dramatic influence on the drag and heating experienced by a high-speed vehicle, and can significantly impact fuel mixing and combustion in propulsion systems. The lack of standardized and traceable databases prevents the calibration of computational fluid dynamic models to accurately represent these critical flow phenomena. In this work we accomplished the development and validation against experiments at the same flow and boundary conditions of direct numerical simulations of shock and turbulent boundary layer interactions. We pioneered the development of a unique numerical capability that allows the accurate and detailed three-dimensional turbulence data at a reasonable turn-around time. In turn, parametric studies of fundamental flow physics are feasible, for the first time. By accurate, it is meant that the numerical uncertainty is within the experimental error.