Center for Turbulence Research 475

Annual Research Briefs 2003

Transition in hypersonic flows including

high-temperature gas effects
By Christian Stemmer †

1. Motivation and Objective

Hypersonic transition poses a special challenge for direct numerical simulations. Com-
parable data from Wind-tunnel tests or free-flight testing are not available or not accurate
enough for comparison. The wind-tunnel testing does not allow for the exact match to
the free-flight conditions at such high Mach-numbers.
Flat-plate boundary-layer transition at high Mach-numbers is investigated in this work.
A simulation case was chosen where chemical non-equilibrium plays an important role
but ionization can be neglected. The chosen case at an altitude of H=50Km lies close
to one point on the descent path of the Space Shuttle. The failure of the Space Shuttle
has shown that an improved vehicle for space transportation is imperative in the close
future. Transition research for an improved space-transportation vehicle is crucial in order
to estimate the heat load during re-entry.

2. Numerical Method
A sixth-order accurate numerical method (Adams & Shariff 1996; Adams 1998, 2000)
is extended to incorporate chemical source terms and a conservation equation for the
vibrational temperature (Stemmer & Mansour 2001). This is necessary for the simulation
of chemical non-equilibrium which is present in the investigated regime.
Compact finite differences are employed and the grid is stretched in the wall-normal
direction. Periodic conditions in the spanwise direction are enforced. A third-order ac-
curate Runge-Kutta method is used for the advancement in time. Shocks can be treated
separately through a hybrid ENO method, which is applied only in the areas where
shocks are present.
For the presented simulation, a resolution of 1500 × 240 × 6 points in x, y and z-
direction was used. This yields a resolution of ∆x = 0.066, ∆ymin = 7.717 · 10−3 and
∆z = 0.146, where the lengths are made dimensionless with the boundary-layer thickness
δ1 = 0.2197m.

3. Results
A comparison for the steady base-flow results for three different cases is presented.
Firstly, the ideal-gas case is considered. The second case considers chemical equilibrium
and at last, the chemical non-equilibrium case is calculated.
The most notable difference for the three steady flows is in the temperature which is
shown in the following graphs. The wall-normal profiles of the five chemical species are
also shown.
† Current Address: Institut für Strömungsmechanik, Technische Universität Dresden,
George-Bähr-Str. 3c, 01069 Dresden, Germany
 476 0.12 C. Stemmer

0.12
0.08

0.08
y [m]
y [m]
0.04

0.04
0.00

0.00
PSfrag replacements 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5
PSfrag 5.0 5.5
replacements 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5
x [m] x [m]
2.0 4.0 2.0 4.0
*103 *103
T T

Figure 1. Ideal gas case; temperature in the Figure 2. Chemical equilibrium case: temper-
M=20 boundary layer; contours in intervals of ature in the M=20 boundary layer; contours in
200K from 200-5000K intervals of 200K from 200-5000K
0.12

0.12
0.08

0.08
y [m]

y [m]
0.04

0.04
0.00

0.00

3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5
PSfrag replacements PSfrag replacements
x [m] x [m]
2.0 4.0 2.0 4.0
*103 *103
T Tv

Figure 3. Chemical non-equilibrium case; Figure 4. Chemical non-equilibrium case: vi-

temperature in the M=20 boundary layer; con- brational temperature in the M=20 bound-
tours in intervals of 200K from 200-5000K ary layer; contours in intervals of 200K from
200-5000K

For the ideal-gas case (Fig.1), the similarity solution given at the inflow (Re=1.13 ×
106 ) exhibits a maximum temperature of T =4773.2K at y=0.033m away from the wall.
This temperature is approximately retained in the growing boundary layer.
For the chemical equilibrium case (Fig.2), after a short accommodation effect down-
stream of the similarity solution inflow, shows a maximum temperature of T =4478K for
a given downstream location of x=5.0m at a wall-normal distance of y=0.047m. This
constitutes a decrease in temperature of ∆t=6.2%.
For the chemical non-equilibrium case (Fig.3), the development of the non-equilibrium
conditions takes somewhat longer and the maximum temperature drops to T =2028K at
y=0.066m at the same downstream location. The vibrational temperature in this case
is shown in Fig.4. The vibrational temperature at T =2100K is close to the level of the
translational temperature, but the maximum is observable closer to the wall at y=0.042m
for the same downstream location.
The wall-normal profiles of the species concentrations for the chemical equilibrium
case are shown in Fig.5 and for the non-equilibrium case in Fig.6. In both cases, the
concentrations of the species N and N O are multiplied by a factor in order to make them
 Transition in hypersonic flows 477

PSfrag replacements PSfrag replacements

c [-] c [-]
y [m] y [m]
Figure 5. Chemical equilibrium case: concen- Figure 6. Chemical non-equilibrium case: con-
tration of chemical species (cN × 5 ; cN 2 centration of chemical species (cN × 10 ;
; cO ; cO2 ; cN O ×10 ) cN 2 ; cO ; cO2 ; cN O × 10
)

visible in the chosen graph range. In the equilibrium case, the concentrations are a direct
function of the temperature distribution as shown in Fig.2. The temperatures are high
enough to almost entirely dissociate molecular oxygen inside the boundary layer. Nitrogen
is dissociated to a lesser extent and the molecular level remains at almost 50% for the
maximum temperature of T =4478K. For the non-equilibrium case, the deviation from
the equilibrium state is most noticeable closer to the wall. The maximum dissociation
levels are attained at y=0.02m and the maximum level of N O is reached a little further
away from the wall at y=0.045m for the same downstream location x=5.0m.

4. Future Work
Normal and oblique mode transition studies for the described Ma=20 flow will be
performed. Simulations will be undertaken to provide for chemical and thermal non-
equilibrium conditions.
To mimic closer the introduction of disturbances in an experimental environment,
a point source disturbance, Stemmer (2001), will be introduced. Therewith, a single
frequency but all possible spanwise wave numbers can be excited simultaneously leaving
it to the flow to amplify the unstable components of the disturbance.
Laminar-turbulent transition scenarios under varying disturbance conditions will be
investigated to understand more about the physical behavior of chemically reacting flows
in transition on a flat plate.
Qualitative comparison to the experiments by Mironov & Maslov (2000) will be con-
ducted.

5. Acknowledgments
The author is very thankful for the support from the transition research group in
Stuttgart, Germany, for advice and computing time on the NEC SX-series computers.
Also, the CFD group at the AME at the University of Arizona was very helpful with
numerical issues. Furthermore, the author deeply appreciates the support by Prof. N.A.
Adams from the Technical University of Dresden, Germany.
478 C. Stemmer
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