Numerical investigations on flow and heat transfer characteristics of a high-enthalpy double-cone in thermal and chemical non-equilibrium for hypersonic propulsion

Abstract

There are strong interests in hypersonic propulsion communities in predicting the flow and heat transfer characteristics over a hypersonic vehicle. However, this is quite challenging due to the emergence of thermal and chemical out-of-equilibrium effects as prominent in a high-temperature flow. In this work, we conduct 2D numerical investigations on the hypersonic double cone flow in a surrounding of the stagnation enthalpy of 15.23 MJ/kg by solving the laminar Navier–Stokes equation systems with the vibrational non-equilibrium processes and seven species air reactions. We then conduct the sensitivities analyses on the flow and heat transfer features, as different transport models and different thermochemical models are applied. It is shown that the aerodynamic heat is more sensitive to the transport models than the flow, and the transport coefficients computed by the Gupta-Yos model are more suitable for predicting the double cone flow at the high enthalpy. On the other hand, the flow field of the high enthalpy double cone is more sensitive to the thermochemical models than the heat transfer on the wall excluding the peak position. Behind the detached shock, chemical reactions are found to enhance thermal or vibrational out-of-equilibrium effects. However, vibrational non-equilibrium effects are revealed to weaken the degree of molecule dissociation reactions. Two flow separations occur in the flow field computed by using the thermal non-equilibrium gas models, but the flows of thermal equilibrium gas models separate only once. The maximum values of wall parameters without chemical reactions are found to deviate greatly from the experimental measurements. The thermochemical out-of-equilibrium gas model can predict the separation region size closer to the experiment than the two reported numerical results. The wall static pressure and heat flux are also shown to well match the experimental results. The present work should shed lights on better understanding thermochemical non-equilibrium effects of complex flow phenomenon like the shock wave/boundary layer interaction in hypersonic propulsion with high enthalpy surroundings.