Duality of the stream pattern of supersonic viscous gas flow past a blunt-fin junction: effect of a low sweep angle

Abstract

Results of numerical solution of the problem of supersonic flow past a symmetric blunt fin mounted on a plate with a developing boundary layer are presented. Generally, the case considered corresponds to the flow configuration used in the experimental and computational study by Tutty et al. (2013), in which the laminar air flow with the freestream Mach number of 6.7 is considered. Previously, the authors have shown (2020) that for these conditions two stable solutions corresponding to metastable flow states with different configurations of the vortex structure and the pattern of local heat transfer are predicted. In present paper, the influence of a low sweep angle of a blunt leading edge on the vortex structure in the separation region, local heat transfer, and the possibility of obtaining a dual solution are investigated. The bifurcation diagrams showing for two solutions the main horseshoe vortex center location and the length of separation region versus the skew angle are presented.