Experimental investigation of shock train unsteady movement in a mixing duct

Abstract

The structure and dynamic of the shock train in a mixing duct are investigated experimentally in a supersonic air breathing wind tunnel. High-speed schlieren technique and pressure measurements are utilized for the data acquisition. Nozzle clapboards are applied to separate the incoming flow into upper secondary flow, primary flow, and lower secondary flow. The Mach number of all incoming flows is 2.05, whereas the static pressures between primary and secondary flow stay unmatched. Experimental results indicate that nozzle clapboards lead to complex background waves and mixing layers in the mixing duct. As the throttling valve rotates at a constant speed, two motion patterns alternatively govern the shock train movement, namely jump movement and slow movement. Judging from the path of shock train leading edges, adverse pressure gradient at the wall of background flow induces jump movement, while the slow movement only appears at the zone of favorable pressure gradient. Besides, leading shock structures continuously change in the forward propagation process. Four types of leading shock structures are discovered namely regular reflection, convex-stem Mach reflection, straight-stem Mach reflection, and concave-stem Mach reflection. Based on the numerical results of the background flow field, these special structures are explained theoretically by analyzing the variation of the wavefront Ma contour lines.