Numerical and experimental studies of the hypersonic flow around a cube at incidence

In order to improve predictions of the on-ground casualty risk associated with the uncontrolled atmospheric reentry of satellites from Low Earth Orbit, there is significant research interest in the development of engineering models of hypersonic heating rates to faceted shapes. A key part of developing such models is generating accurate datasets of the heat fluxes experienced by faceted shapes at various orientations in hypersonic flows. In this work, we use wind tunnel experiments and CFD simulations to study the hypersonic flow around a cuboid geometry at 5◦ incidence in a Mach 5 flow at Reynolds numbers of 79.5 × 103, 109 × 103 and 148 × 103. The wind tunnel data are obtained in the University of Manchester’s High SuperSonic Tunnel and consist of schlieren images and temperature histories collected using infrared thermography. These temperature histories are used to calculate experimental heat fluxes by solving a three-dimensional inverse heat conduction problem. CFD simulations around the same geometry at equivalent free-stream conditions are calculated with the DLR-TAU code. The experimental and CFD results show good agreement both in terms of heat fluxes as well as flow structure. Notable flow structures include wedge-shaped regions of high heat flux which emanate from the windward corners of the cube. Analysis of numerical Q-criterion contours show that these high heat flux regions are caused by vortex structures generated by the expansion at the cube corner. Analysis of the numerical skin friction coefficient shows that even at incidence there is no breakaway separation from the expansion edges of the cube and the flow remains attached throughout. We show that although there is little change in the average heat flux experienced by a cube at 5◦ incidence to the free-stream compared to one at 0◦ incidence, there are significant changes in the heat flux contours over the cubes at these two incidences. Finally, we calculate a number of heating shape factors which can easily be implemented in satellite ...