Numerical study of Transient Flow in a Full-Size Reflected Shock Tunnel

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to develop a CFD solver that used to simulate the transient flow phenomena in a reflected shock tunnel. The transient flow phenomena in a shock tunnel include the reflected shock/boundary layer interaction and the starting process of nozzle flow that can affect the duration of test flow in actual conditions. To numerically simulate these transient flow features, a full-size, axisymmetric reflected shock tunnel model is used. The governing equations are a full Navier-Stokes equation, a species equation and a simplified polynomial correlation to simulate the real gas effects. The numerical code is developed based on the finite volume method coupled with the upwind Roe's scheme and the total variation diminishing (TVD) method. To increase the calculation efficiency, a multi-block and multi-mesh grid generation technique is employed in a huge computational domain. The present computational results have not only confirmed the theoretical characteristics of a shock tube, but have also qualitatively presented the phenomena of reflected shock/boundary layer interaction and the starting process of nozzle flow. This numerical code is a useful tool to demonstrate the actual flow phenomena and to assist the design of experiments.