FLOWFIELD SURVEYS AND COMPUTATIONS OF A CROSSING-SHOCK WAVE BOUNDARY-LAYER INTERACTION

A joint experimental and computational study has been performed to inv estigate the B flowfield structure created by two crossing oblique sho ck waves interacting with a turbulent boundary layer. Such an interact ion is of practical importance in the design of high-speed sidewall-co mpression inlets. The interaction is created by a test model, consisti ng of two sharp fins mounted at 15-deg angle of attack to a Bat plate, placed in a Mach 3.85 freestream flow with a unit Reynolds number of 76 x 10(6)/m. Two computational solutions, one using a Baldwin-Lomax a lgebraic turbulent eddy viscosity model and one using a modified kappa -epsilon (Rodi) turbulence model, are compared with experimental flowf ield data obtained from a fast-response five-hole probe, Both the expe riment and the computations show that the flowfield is dominated by a large, low-Mach-number, low-total-pressure separated region located on the interaction centerline, A comparison of the results shows signifi cant differences between experiment and computations within this separ ated region, Outside the separated region, the experiment and computat ions are in good agreement. Additionally, the comparison shows that bo th turbulence models provide similar results, with neither model being clearly superior in predicting the flowfield.