ILES of an array of three subsonic counter-flow jets issuing from a wing leading edge exposed to hypersonic aerodynamic heating

Abstract

Abstract The flow of an active thermal protection system exploiting subsonic counter-flow jets for wing leading edges of hypersonic vehicles is numerically studied on the basis of the three dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. The coolant air issuing from around the stagnation point as an array of three jets spreads over both the upper and the lower sides of the cylinder surface and about 40 ~ 60% cooling effectiveness is achieved in the range up to 5 degrees angle of attack despite the occurrence of various three-dimensional fluid-dynamic instabilities. The numerical scheme is second order accurate but simple inclusion of high order polynomial approximation in the reconstruction enables the capturing of finer structure of the flow field.

Keywords

• Subsonic jet
• Counter-flow
• Aerodynamic heating
• TPS
• Rayleigh-Taylor
• Kelvin-Helmholtz