Spg. Dinavahi et al., DIRECT NUMERICAL-SIMULATION AND DATA-ANALYSIS OF A MACH-4.5 TRANSITIONAL BOUNDARY-LAYER FLOW, Physics of fluids, 6(3), 1994, pp. 1323-1330
This paper describes the creation by temporal direct numerical simulat
ion and the analysis based on the Reynolds stress transport equations
of a high quality data set that represents the laminar-turbulent trans
ition of a high-speed boundary-layer flow. Following Pruett and Zang [
Theoret. Comput. Fluid Dyn. 3, 345 (1992)], and with the help of algor
ithmic refinements, the evolution of an axial, Mach 4.5 boundary-layer
flow along the exterior of a hollow cylinder is simulated numerically
. From a perturbed laminar initial state, the well-resolved simulation
proceeds through laminar breakdown to the beginning of a turbulent fl
ow regime. Favre-averaged Reynolds stress transport equations are deri
ved in generalized curvilinear coordinates and are then specialized to
the cylindrical geometry at hand. Reynolds stresses and various turbu
lence quantities, such as turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent Mach
number, are calculated from the numerical data at various stages of th
e transition process. The kinetic energy ''budgets'' are also construc
ted from the transport equations. Various contributing terms for the e
volution of kinetic energy, like the rates of production, dissipation,
transport, and diffusion, are presented. The compressible dissipation
rate is small in comparison with the solenoidal dissipation rate for
all times. The pressure-dilatation term is of the same order of magnit
ude as the compressible dissipation rate. The authors hope that both t
he data set and the analysis presented will benefit those who attempt
to model high-speed transitional flow.