Evaluation of boundary layer transition criteria for space shuttle orbiter entry

A comparison was made of the effect of boundary layer transition on center-line heating in a conical and a normal-shock flow field. It was shown that the time of transition onset (and, hence, the heating parameter) is significantly influenced by the choice of transition criterion in the normal-shock flow but that this parameter is much less sensitive to the transition criterion in a conical flow field. An evaluation of the effects of boundary layer transition on center-line heating in the conical flow field has shown that the temperatures are less affected by the use of various transition crieria than are heat loads. This difference is due to the delay in the time of transition onset predicted by those criteria with high transition Reynolds numbers. The criteria which predict the most severe thermal environment are those of fully turbulent flow throughout the entry, because transition occurs early in the trajectory for each of these criteria, they tend to predict similar values of maximum temperature and total heat load especially at center-line locations aft of 0.6. Evaluation of center-line heating generated by various trajectory shaping approaches has shown that the maximum surface temperature distribution was not significantly affected by the shaping technique. However, the heat load distribution is influenced, particularly on the forward portion of the vehicle.