Shock Wave Turbulent Boundary Layer

Interaction in a 2-D Compression Corner

ASMELASH HAFTU AMAHA

Department of Mechanical Engineering (Gas Turbine Technology), Defence Institute of Advanced Technology
Girinagar, Pune-411025, Maharashtra, India

AMARJ IT SINGH
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Defence Institute of Advanced Technology Girinagar, Pune-411025,
Maharashtra, India

ROSCHELLE R. MARTIS
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Defence Institute of Advanced Technology Girinagar, Pune-411025,
Maharashtra, India


Abstract:
A computational study has been carried out to analyze the supersonic shock wave turbulent boundary
layer interaction in a 2-D compression corner for a free stream Mach number of 2.94. The study has been
done for a unit Reynolds number of 36.4x 10
6
per meter and 20
0
corner angle. The model has been
analyzed using 2-D numerical simulations based on a commercially available Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) Code that employs k- Shear Stress Transport (SST) turbulence model. The
substantiation of the CFD code and the turbulence model used is obtained by comparing with the
experimental results available in literature. Comparison of the surface pressure distribution with
experiment exhibited good engineering agreement. Numerical results indicate that the extent of the
separated zone has increased and thus show increased separation and reattachment points when
compared to experiment.
Keywords: Compression corner, Shock wave, Shock wave/Boundary layer Interaction, Supersonic flow

1. Introduction
The phenomena of shock-wave / turbulent boundary layer interactions (SWTBLIs) is frequently encountered on
the surfaces of aeronautical/aerospace devices like air intake compression ramps of an air breathing propulsion
system, jet nozzles, control surfaces and various parts of high speed vehicle. The knowledge of the boundary
layer which develops on the walls of these components is essential to optimise the use of these vehicles or
equipments. The separation of this boundary layer or its disturbance by a shock wave are two phenomena, which
can involve increase of losses of total pressure, high peak heat transfer rates, hence drag and can sometimes
even be catastrophic if the shock is strong enough to cause separation [1, 2, 3]. SWTBLIs are a fact of life in the
practical world of supersonic flows and that is why valuable attention is given here.
A significant amount of work has been under taken to study turbulent shock-separated compression
corner flows. Some of the authors who have extensively studied the flow field in a compression corner include:
(Delery (1985) [1]), (Daniel Arnal and J .M. Delery (2004) [2]), (A.B. Oliver et al (2007) [3]), and (Settles et al
(1994) [4]).
This research work focuses on a significantly separated 20
0
2-D compression corner flow-field of Mach
number 2.94 to find out the extent of the separation bubble which causes increase in losses and thereby
adversely affects the performance. It is hoped that a more physical representation of the SWTBLI in the corner
region will improve the capability to predict the surface pressure and wall shear stress for these interactions.

2. Theory
The basic interactions between a shock wave and a boundary layer are 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional. 2-D
interactions include: the ramp flow, the impinging reflecting shock, and the pressure discontinuity resulting
from adaptation to a higher downstream pressure level. 3-D interactions include, swept shock boundary layer
Asmelash Haftu Amaha et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)
ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 3 March 2011 2256
interaction. Compression corner interaction, which corresponds to a control surface or an air-intake compression
ramp, is one of the above mentioned types of interactions considered in this paper.

Compression Corner/Ramp Flow:
The compression corner interaction comes when supersonic flow along a flat plate is compressed by a wedge or
ramp of angle . When the ramp angle is small, the overall flow structure is not much affected by the
interaction taking place at the ramp origin. The main difference is a spreading of the wall pressure distribution,
the step of the inviscid solution being replaced by a progressive rise between the upstream pressure level p
0
and
the final value p
1
corresponding to the oblique shock equations.
When the ramp angle is increased (hence the shock strength), the upstream influence distance (L
0

defined as the distance between the interaction onset and the ramp origin) increases accordingly and a situation
can be reached where the pressure rise is high enough to induce separation of the boundary layer (Figure 1). In
this situation:
1. The ramp upstream influence, hence upstream influence length Lo, has considerably increased.
2. A first shock associated with separation forms well upstream of the ramp.
3. A second shock originates from the reattachment region on the ramp which intersects the separation shock at
a short distance from the wall [3, 5-7].









Fig.1. The structure of a ramp flow with boundary layer separation [2]

3. Solution Methods
Grid generation and boundary conditions:
Two-dimensional, high-speed, turbulent flow simulations (with air as the fluid) are performed for a flow over a
ramp at free-stream Mach numbers (M
0
=2.94). The simulations are performed using commercial CFD software.
The flow conditions and simulation setups used are given in this section.











Fig .2. Grid system(computational domain)
To study the flow-field of the interaction, the basic compression corner geometry used in [3, 4] has been
adopted for the present study, primarily due to the availability of experimental data. Fig 2 shows the basic mesh
details of the ramp. It has a ramp of angle =20
0
, capture height of 356mm, flat plate length equal to 711mm and
corner length of 57mm. Computations were made with three different grids [Grid 1 (43000 cells), Grid 2 (63000
cells) and Grid 3 (103500 cells) ] in two blocks with a wall spacing of 1.25.10
-6
m. A typical grid distribution
adopted near the corner region is shown in figure 2. Density based implicit solver with upwind second order
L

p
0

p
1

Asmelash Haftu Amaha et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)
ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 3 March 2011 2257
discretisation scheme for flow and transport equations was adopted. The second-order upwind scheme provides
stability and higher order accuracy for supersonic flows and capture shocks better at cell faces through a Taylor
series expansion of the cell-cantered solution about the cell centroid. Convergence criteria were considered
when residuals have fallen by four orders and measurement of shear stress at different locations converged to
four significant digits. The software is commercially available software that solves steady state and time
accurate CFD problems on structured/unstructured grids. The commercial software has several solvers for both
incompressible and compressible flows in both an implicit and explicit numerical framework.
Values of total pressure, P
0
, total temperature, T
0
, has been defined at the inflow boundary, and Mach
number and static pressure, P

has been defined on the boundary opposite the viscous wall (isothermal). The out
flow was assigned extrapolation. A convergence criterion for the residuals of all equations has been set to 10
-6
.
Turbulent Intensity and viscosity ratio of 1 has been used. Boundary layer thickness (
0
) computed from
simulation was 8.5mm.

Table1. Free streamand inflow boundary layer data





Table 2. Reference values used in data reduction




4. Results and Discussions
Results from the test case computed by the CFD Code are presented in this section along with discussion. Where
possible, each case uses the same non-dimensionalizing reference values used in the literature describing the
dataset and are given in table2. Converged solution has been obtained with modified k- (SST) turbulence
model and small differences exist between turbulence model and experimental data in the separation region.
Plots of surface pressure distribution, wall shear stress, x-velocity distribution and density contour etc are
presented. Simulation result of the ramp flow (=20
0
) generally show that the computed pressure peaks tend to
show an overly steep rise in pressure near the separation point. Model results are presented below.









Fig. 3. Plot of density contours near the corner region
Looking at the contour plot in figure 3, we observe the separation and reattachment shock waves. The
density contour shows more clearly the separation and reattachment shocks emanating from the separation and
reattachment regions respectively, and their intersection indicates a slight bend from which a stronger shock
appears due to merging of the two left running shocks. For this type of shock-shock interaction, the reflected
wave and slip line are indicated in figure 1. This is by no means one of the possible wave interactions in a
Ramp M

T
0
[K] P
0
[Pa]
[mm]
Re

[m
-1
]
20
0
2.94 303 4.83E+0
5
8.27 36.4.10
6

Ramp
Ref
[m] M
Ref
V
Ref
[m/s] P
Ref
[Pa]
20
0
0.00827 2.94 621.0 14361
Asmelash Haftu Amaha et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)
ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 3 March 2011 2258
supersonic flow. However, this represents one of the most common situations encountered frequently in
practice.









Fig. 4. X velocity versus x coordinate
Plot of x-velocity versus x-coordinate is shown in figure 4. This figure shows the velocity on the wall, ramp,
and default interior region. The locations of separation point (x=-19.5mm) and reattachment point (x=15.1mm)
are obtained from the plot. These points are obtained in the same way from wall shear stress (figure 5)









Fig. 5. Plot of wall shear stress distribution

Figure 5 shows the x-wall shear stress distribution on the 20
0
ramp. For this case the wall shear stress from
the upstream boundary layer is very high, and the SST model shows separation too early. The negative wall
shear stress shows the region of reversed flow.









Fig. 6. Plot of wall pressure distribution (SST Model)

Figure 6 shows the static pressure distribution on the flat plate and ramp surfaces. As seen from figure 6,
the SST model shows separation too early and the oversized separation bubble throws of the pressure in the
Asmelash Haftu Amaha et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)
ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 3 March 2011 2259
recovering boundary layer. The reversal in which SST model better predicted the surface pressure and wall
shear stress seems to indicate that these differences are within the experimental uncertainty.
5. Conclusions
Flow has been simulated for a 20
0
compression ramp at M
0
of 2.94. Using the density contours, a fully separated
situation has been observed explicitly showing the separation and reattachment shocks. The surface pressure
distribution predicted by the CFD Code for the 2-D compression ramp based on SST Model has shown greater
tendency to separate, possibly an effect of the lower Reynolds number. The apparent shift in the experimental
and simulation wall pressure distributions on the 20
0
ramp is in a good comparison with the available
experimental results and thus SST model has predicted the separation region earlier.

Acknowledgment
The authors are sincerely thankful to Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, Girinagar, Pune-411025,
Maharashtra, India, for supporting this work.

References

[1] J .M. Delery: Shock Wave Turbulent Boundary Layer Interaction and its Control, Aerospace Sci. Vol. 22, pp. 209-280, 1985.
[2] Daniel Arnal and J ean Delery: Shock Wave Boundary Layer Interaction, NATO, May 2004.
[3] A. B. Oliver et al: Assessment of Turbulent Shock-Boundary Layer Interaction Computations Using the OVERFLOW Code, School
of Aeronautics and Astronautics Purdue University, J anuary 2007.
[4] Gary S. Settles and Lori j. Dodson: Hypersonic Shock/Boundary Layer Interaction Database: New and Corrected Data, NASA
Contractor Report 177638, April 1994.
[5] K.Sinha, K. Mahesh et al: Modelling the effects of shock unsteadiness in Shock turbulent Boundary Layer Interactions, AIAA
J ournal Vol. 43, No. 3, March 2005.
[6] J . S. Shang, W. L. Hankey J r. Numerical Simulation of Shock Wave-Turbulent Boundary Layer Interaction, AIAA J ournal Vol. 14,
No.10, October 1976
[7] DC Wilcox: Turbulence modelling for CFD, 1994.

Asmelash Haftu Amaha et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)
ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 3 March 2011 2260