Traveling Crossflow Instability for the HIFiRE-5 Elliptic Cone

Abstract

A 38.1%-scale model of the Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation Program’s Flight Five 2:1 elliptic cone flight vehicle was used to investigate the traveling crossflow instability in a Mach 6 quiet wind tunnel. Traveling crossflow waves were detected with pressure sensors mounted flush with the model surface. The crossflow instability phase speed and wave angle were calculated from the cross spectra of the three pressure sensors. Both quantities showed good agreement with linear stability theory. Duplicate runs at the same initial conditions showed excellent repeatability in traveling crossflow wave properties. Traveling crossflow waves in quiet flow showed very low levels of nonlinear interactions. No traveling crossflow waves were observed for any Reynolds number for elevated freestream noise levels, but transition occurred for a much lower Reynolds number than in quiet flow. Due to the lack of nonlinear growth in quiet flow and the absence of traveling crossflow waves in noisy flow, it appeared that the traveling crossflow instability was not the primary transition mechanism on the model for quiet or noisy flow in this wind tunnel.