Leading-edge receptivity to free-stream disturbance waves for hypersonic flow over a parabola

Abstract

The receptivity of hypersonic boundary layers to free-stream disturbances, which is the process of environmental disturbances initially entering the boundary layers and generating disturbance waves, is altered considerably by the presence of bow shocks in hypersonic flow fields. This paper presents a numerical simulation study of the generation of boundary layer disturbance waves due to free-stream waves, for a two-dimensional Mach 15 viscous flow over a parabola. Both steady and unsteady flow solutions of the receptivity problem are obtained by computing the full Navier–Stokes equations using a high-order-accurate shock-fitting finite difference scheme. The effects of bow-shock/free-stream-sound interactions on the receptivity process are accurately taken into account by treating the shock as a discontinuity surface, governed by the Rankine-Hugoniot relations. The results show that the disturbance waves generated and developed in the hypersonic boundary layer contain both first-, second-, and third-mode waves. A parametric study is carried out on the receptivity characteristics for different free-stream waves, frequencies, nose bluntness characterized by Strouhal numbers, Reynolds numbers, Mach numbers, and wall cooling. In this paper, the hypersonic boundary-layer receptivity is characterized by a receptivity parameter defined as the ratio of the maximum induced wave amplitude in the first-mode-dominated region to the amplitude of the free-stream forcing wave. It is found that the receptivity parameter decreases when the forcing frequency or nose bluntness increase. The results also show that the generation of boundary layer waves is mainly due to the interaction of the boundary layer with the acoustic wave field behind the bow shock, rather than interactions with the entropy and vorticity wave fields.