Hypersonic Boundary-Layer Transition over a Blunt Circular Cone in a Mach 8 Digital Wind Tunnel

To understand the effects of freestream acoustic disturbances on transition reversal over a blunt body, three-dimensional direct numerical simulations (DNS) were conducted to investigate the interaction of a tunnel-like acoustic disturbance field with a Mach 8 laminar boundary layer over a 7 deg half-angle blunt cone with a nose radius of 𝑅𝑛 = 5.2 mm. The flow conditions and the axisymmetric cone geometry matched those measured in the Sandia Hypersonic Wind Tunnel at Mach 8 (Sandia HWT-8), and the incident freestream acoustic disturbances in the DNS were generated by acoustic radiation from the nozzle-wall turbulent boundary layer in the same tunnel. Consistent with the predictions of the nonmodal instability analysis, the study shows the emergence of a second spectral peak for moderately oblique waves between 150 kHz and 200 kHz in the aft part of the cone. The spectral energy of temperature and streamwise velocity fluctuations is initially concentrated within the entropy layer. These fluctiations are eventually “swallowed” by the boundary layer as the entropy-layer thickness 𝛿𝑆 becomes similar to the boundary-layer thickness 𝛿h𝑡 at downstream locations. The numerical schlieren contours show the same inclined structures commonly observed in blunt cone experiments, and these structures are found to be three dimensional and advect with a constant speed approximately equal to the mean flow speed near the edge of the boundary layer.