MEASUREMENTS OF THE TRIPLE SHOCK-WAVE TURBULENT BOUNDARY-LAYER INTERACTION

A joint experimental and computational study has investigated the flow field structure created by three crossing oblique shock waves interact ing with a turbulent boundary layer, Such an interaction is of practic al importance in the design of high-speed sidewall-compression inlets. The interaction is created by a test model consisting of two vertical sharp fins mounted at 15-deg angle of attack to a horizontal flat pla te. A third compression surface of 10-deg angle is mounted to the plat e between the two vertical fins. The Mach 3.85 flowfield is examined e xperimentally through kerosene lampblack and planar laser scattering v isualizations. The results are used to develop a flowfield model of th e interaction structure. This structure is found to consist of a compl ex wave pattern overlying a viscous separated region. The presence of the 10-deg compression ramp reduces the severity of the boundary-layer separation compared to interactions created by the two fins alone, Ad ditionally, the experimental flowfield data are compared with a comput ational solution using a modified kappa-epsilon (Rodi) turbulence mode l. A comparison of the results shows that, despite the complexity of t he flowfield, the computed solution does reveal several of the key flo w features observed experimentally.