Unsteady simulation of hypersonic flow around a heat flux probe in ground testing conditions

Abstract

In order to investigate the accuracy of the rebuilding code for the free stream conditions and the total enthalpy in the Longshot Hypersonic facility at the von Karman Institute (VKI), a series of unsteady CFD simulations of axisymmetric hypersonic flow over a heat flux probe have been performed. The free stream and the total conditions provided by experiments as a function of time were used as unsteady inlet boundary conditions for those simulations. The full duration (15ms) of the test window is simulated by means of an implicit time accurate finite volume solver. The numerical method and the time integration procedure used during this investigation are described. The numerical results are within 6% of the experimental data for both the stagnation pressure and the heat flux at the reference test time conditions.