NAVIER-STOKES COMPUTATIONS OF HYPERSONIC FLOWS

The current interest in hypersonic flows is leading to significant eff ort both to develop CFD methods and also to provide experimental data for their evaluation. In our research we attempt to integrate CFD and experiments as closely as possible so much so that most of our experim ental model designs are based upon preliminary flow field computations in order to identify likely regions of importance and distribute inst rumentation as efficiently as possible. The experiments must also have the CFD requirements clearly in mind. In particular we consider it im portant to separate evaluation on the numerics (essentially the algori thm) from modelling of the physics (which includes the uncertainties o f turbulence modelling); to this end our experiments include laminar s tudies, for both attached and separated flows, for which the physical equations are known exactly, as well as turbulent flow studies. This p aper concentrates mainly on our CFD efforts and presents details of a high resolution solver for viscous flows together with their predictio ns for a range of problems which are the subject of our current and pl anned experiments.