Output details

Direct numerical simulation of transitional flow at high Mach number coupled with a wall heating model

Significance of output:

Wall temperature variations due to aerodynamic heating at high speed can influence the behaviour of the boundary layer, especially transition from laminar to turbulent flow, knowledge of which is critical to the thermal design of the vehicle. Work described in this paper involves coupling the wall temperature variation with direct numerical simulation of the boundary layer; being computationally expensive this has rarely been tackled before. The example studied is of transition caused by an isolated roughness element. It was shown that, depending on flow conditions, the flow may initially undergo transition but then re-laminarise as the wall temperature rises.