Visualization of separation and reattachment in an incident shock-induced interaction

Abstract

An experimental study is conducted on the qualitative visualization of the flow field in separation and reattachment flows induced by an incident shock interaction by several techniques including shear-sensitive liquid crystal coating (SSLCC), oil flow, schlieren, and numerical simulation. The incident shock wave is generated by a wedge in a Mach 2.7 duct flow, where the strength of the interaction is varied from weak to moderate by changing the angle of attack α of the wedge from 8° and 10° to 12°. The stagnation pressure upstream was set to approximately 607.9 kPa. The SSLCC technique was used to visualize the surface flow characteristics and analyze the surface shear stress fields induced by the initial incident shock wave over the bottom wall and sidewall experimentally which resolution is 3500 × 200 pixels, and the numerical simulation was also performed as the supplement for a clearer understanding to the flow field. As a result, surface shear stress over the bottom wall was visualized qualitatively by SSLCC images, and flow features such as separation/reattachment and the variations of position/size of separation bubble with wedge angle were successfully distinguished. Furthermore, analysis of shear stress trend over the bottom wall by a hue value curve indicated that the relative magnitude of shear stress increased significantly downstream of the separation bubble compared with that upstream. The variation trend of shear stress was consistent with the numerical simulation results, and the error of separation position was less than 2 mm. Finally, the three-dimensional schematic of incident shock-induced interaction has been achieved by qualitative summary by multiple techniques, including SSLCC, oil flow, schlieren, and numerical simulation.