A swept fin-induced flow field with different height mounting gaps

Abstract

In order to apply the air fin successfully and ensure the maneuverability of hypersonic vehicle, a key problem to be studied urgently is the heat flux brought by the fin mounting gap. The appearance of mounting gap and fin shaft can induce many complex flow structures which need more attentions to be investigated. Under Ma 6, Nano-tracer-based Planar Laser Scattering (NPLS) and Temperature Sensitive Paints (TSP) were applied to visualize and measure transient flow structures and heat flux distribution of a swept fin-induced flow field with different height mounting gaps. Complementarily, Reynolds-averaged N-S equations were solved with k-ω SST turbulent model. The heat flux distribution results of numerical simulation and TSP observed the change of high heat flux region with different mounting gap, both in position and magnitude. The streamlines based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and flow visualization results obtained by NPLS revealed the cause of high heat flux region. The high heat flux region in this flow field is mainly related to the reattachment of vortex and flow stagnation. The increase of gap height can lead to stronger gap overflow and shaft-induced horseshoe vortex, which are source of the high heat flux around the fin. The case with the highest mounting gap (4 mm) en-counters the most severe aerodynamic heating, both on the surface of fin and plate. Thus, under the premise of ensuring the flexibility of the fin, the gap should be set as small as possible.