Ensuring safe descend of reusable rocket stages – Numerical simulation and experiments on subsonic turbulent air flow around a semi-circular cylinder at zero angle of attack and moderate Reynolds number

Abstract

Two-dimensional flow around semi-circular cylinder at zero angle of attack and at Re = 50000 during the self-oscillatory regime has been extensively studied within the URANS method with the use of different-structure grids (multiblock, structured overlapping, unstructured composite), the SST turbulence model and its versions (1993) and (2003) considering the streamline curvature influence modified within the Rodi–Leschziner–Isaev approach and numerical different-approximation methods realized in two codes (VP2/3, Fluent). Experiments have been made on flow around a semi-circular cylinder in the wind tunnel of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Institute of Mechanics to obtain data for verification of numerical predictions. The double-mode character of a periodic time history of a drag force caused by a periodically forming and disappearing jet flap and acting upon a body is explained. With increasing compressibility at a Mach number ranging from 0 to 0.5, it is observed that periodic flow around the semi-circular cylinder is restructured, and the time history of the drag force acting upon it is described by a dependence close to a sinusoidal one. It is found that, as the Mach number is increased, pressure field distortions in the form of concentric cylindrical waves propagating from the semi-circular cylinder and the vortex street behind it grow over the infrasonic range.