A numerical study of oblique shock-wave reflections with experimental comparisons

Abstract

A direct comparison is made for several occurrences of oblique shock-wave reflections between interferometric results obtained at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) 10 cm x 18 cm hyper­-velocity shock tube and numerical results obtained by using a current computational method for solving the Euler equations. Very good qualitative agreement is obtained for equilibrium and frozen flow fields except in small regions where the experiments were dominated by viscous flow. The quantitative agreement is very close in some cases but can be out by 10–15% in cases with non-equilibrium flow or viscous structures or both. Additional parametrized sequences of calculations are presented to assess the utility of the present numerical method in constructing the various reflection–transition lines for perfect inviscid flows in the shock-wave Mach number, wedge-angle ( M s , θ w )-plane, and the validity of the ‘boundary-layer defect’ theory.