Boundary layer on a hypersonic sharp cone at small angle of attack

Abstract

The compressible, laminar boundary-layer flow over a sharp cone has been calculated for an angle of attack slightly greater than the cone half angle. The calculations have been carried out with an inviscid flow based on an asymptotic inner and outer expansion of the flowfield. The asymptotic expansion has been carried out for both first and second order in the angle of attack, and the need for the second-order results in the boundary-layer calculations has been studied. The flow conditions were chosen so that the theoretical calculations could be compared with experimental results for important boundary-layer parameters, such as heat transfer and boundary-layer thickness. The results of the investigation show that the boundary-layer equations and the second-order inviscid flow describe well the boundary-layer characteristics, and that higher-order boundary-layer influences are not important for the flow conditions studied. The most important interaction effect between the boundary layer and inviscid flow was determined to be the displacement effect.