A study of the dimensions of the wake behind a cone travelling at hypersonic speed

Abstract

In a series of papers (see, for example, [1–5]) numerous results have appeared detailing experimentally determined dimensions of wakes behind spheres or spherically blunted cylinders travelling with hypersonic speed in air. During this same period substantially less attention has been paid to the study of the parameters of the wake behind a cone, in particular, a cone at an angle of attack. In the present paper we present the results of measuring the mean width of the wake, and the mean-square deviation of the wake boundary, for a spherically blunted cone of 10‡ half-angle with nose radius 6% of the base diameter, travelling in air at Mach number M=12 and Reynolds number Re=0.3·106, and with an angle of attack varying from 12‡ to 24‡.