A comparative study and validation of upwind and central-difference Navier-Stokes codes for high-speed flows

A comparative study was made using 4 different computer codes for solving the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Three different test problems were used, each of which has features typical of high speed internal flow problems of practical importance in the design and analysis of propulsion systems for advanced hypersonic vehicles. These problems are the supersonic flow between two walls, one of which contains a 10 deg compression ramp, the flow through a hypersonic inlet, and the flow in a 3-D corner formed by the intersection of two symmetric wedges. Three of the computer codes use similar recently developed implicit upwind differencing technology, while the fourth uses a well established explicit method. The computed results were compared with experimental data where available.