Hypersonic multicycle gas jet with a high degree of underexpansion at the nozzle exit

Abstract

Experimental research on highly underexpanded gas jets flowing from supersonic nozzles into an ambient medium has shown that for fairly large Mach and Reynolds numbers at the nozzle exit the jet consists of several cycles or “barrels” [1–3]. The authors have made a theoretical study of these jets, using the nonstationary analogy method (law of plane sections). An approximate model of the flow is constructed and an analytic solution is obtained for the location of the boundary of the multicycle jet. The corresponding equivalent nonstationary problem of the expansion of a cylindrical slug of gas is solved numerically. The results are found to be consistent with the experimental data and make it possible to explain a number of observations. It is shown, for example, that the experimentally observed decrease in the amplitude of the cycles (maximum radius of the “barrels”) as they progress downstream is due to the dissipation of energy in shock waves. It appears that the length of the cycles is more or less independent of the dissipation and almost constant. The effect of the removal (supply) of heat, for example, due to radiation, the relaxation of internal degrees of freedom, etc., on the geometry of the jet is examined. It is shown that the removal of heat leads to a decrease in the amplitude of the cycles and the supply of heat to an increase, but, like dissipation, neither affects the length of the cycles. The problem of a jet in a weakly inhomogeneous atmosphere is solved. It has shown that the jet geometry possesses an adiabatic invariant linking the length and amplitude of the cycles.