Experimental study on the hypersonic boundary layer transition induced by tandem cylinders

Abstract

The flow field structure and heat flux distribution around an isolated cylinder and tandem cylinders on a flat plate at different angles of attack (AoA) and inflow conditions are investigated in a Mach 6 low-noise wind tunnel, using nano-tracer-based planar laser scattering (NPLS) techniques and the temperature sensitive paint (TSP) technique. The results reveal that, first, at AoA = 10°, the downstream cylinder will cause a horseshoe vortex formed by the upstream cylinder, which originally propagates parallel to the downstream, to expand to both sides. Subsequently, when the number of cylinders increases, the spanwise width of the affected area is increased further. In addition, a low-heat flux region caused by the recirculation region appears behind the cylinder; downstream of the low-heat flux region, the heat flux distribution of the isolated cylinder model forms a parallel stripe structure, while in the tandem cylinder model, it resembles a “Λ-shaped” distribution. A second key finding is that, with the decrease in AoA, the region of influence of the cylinder decreases. Moreover, the “Λ-shaped” heat flux structure in the wake of the downstream tandem cylinders gradually disappears, and the stripe structure near the second cylinder is in a “shuttle-shaped” distribution. Notably, with the increase in the spacing between the two tandem cylinders, the spanwise width of the “shuttle-shaped” distribution increases. The low-heat flux area behind the second cylinder initially increases with an increase in the spacing, but when the spacing is too large, a high-heat flux stripe begins to appear in the centre of the low-heat flux region. In addition, placing a third cylinder on the wake centreline of the tandem cylinder has a slight impact on the flow, but its effect is enhanced when the third cylinder is located outside the recirculation region of the tandem cylinder.