Study of the streamwise location of a micro vortex generator for a separation-control mechanism in supersonic flow

Abstract

A shock wave/boundary layer interaction is a common phenomenon in supersonic (hypersonic) flows, and it usually occurs in an airbreathing propulsion system. It induces a large separation bubble and a local peak heat flux, and means of controlling it have attracted much attention. In this paper, three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations and the shear stress transfer k–ω model are employed to study the flow control mechanism of a micro vortex generator in a supersonic flow with a freestream at a Mach number of 2.9; the influence of the streamwise location is taken into consideration. At the same time, due to the size of the separation bubble induced by the shock wave/boundary layer interaction, the total pressure recovery coefficient and the wall heat flux density are used to evaluate the control performance. The results show that the size of the separation bubble is greatly reduced, the area of the separation bubble is reduced by 29.63%, and its volume is reduced by 63.27%. However, this entails a total pressure loss and a large peak heat flux, and this should be dealt with through multi-objective design optimization approaches.