Transition prediction of a hypersonic boundary layer over a cone at small angle of attack—with the improvement of e N method

Abstract

The problem of transition prediction for hypersonic boundary layers over a sharp cone has been studied in this work. The Mach number of the oncoming flow is 6, the cone half-angle is 5°, and the angle of attack is 1°. The conventional e N method is used, but the transition location so obtained is obviously incorrect. The reason is that in the conventional method, only the amplifying waves are taken into account, while in fact, for different meridians the decay processes of the disturbances before they begin to grow are different. Based on our own previous work, new interpretation and essential improvement for the e N method are proposed. Not only the amplification process but also the decay process is considered. The location, where by linear stability theory, the amplitude of disturbance wave is amplified from its initial small value to 1%, is considered to be the transition location. The new result for transition prediction thus obtained is found to be fairly satisfactory. It is also indicated that for the calculation of base flow, boundary layer equations can be used for a small angle of attack. Its computational cost is much smaller than those for DNS.