Wake formation when shock wave is shed from the edge of a plate

Abstract

The formation of a laminar wake in the flow behind a shock wave when the latter is shed from the trailing edge of a semi-infinite plate is investigated in this paper. It is shown that the flow on the plate and in the wake turns out to be self-similar, dependent on two dimensionless combinations of variables, and the flow on the plate, including the trailing edge, remains steady in a coordinate system coupled to the shock wave (the fact of the flow self-similarity in the wake was first noted in [1]). An analytic solution of the problem of the wake in the neighborhood of the trailing edge is obtained, from which it follows that, in contrast to [2], there is no line of singularities in the nonstationary boundary-layer equations in the flow domain. This fact is also verified by the analysis of the flow in the neighborhood of a line of tagged particles leaving the trailing edge simultaneously with the shock wave. Hence the problem under consideration is solved by the traditional numerical methods using conditions in the initial section (which is taken to be the section in the neighborhood of the trailing edge), on the wake axis, and at an infinite distance away. Approximate formulas are obtained for the longitudinal velocity profiles in the whole range of shock-wave intensities.