Numerical and Experimental Investigation of a Supersonic Vortex Wake at a Wide Distance from the Wing

This paper presents a complex numerical and experimental investigation of a supersonic vortex wake and its features depending on the Mach number. The aim of this work is to obtain the characteristics of the vortex wake behind a wing at large distance from the wing. The supersonic flow around a straight wing with sharp leading and trailing edges was considered at an attack angle of 10 degrees. Numerical simulations were carried out at the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics RAS using the parallel algorithm for turbulent flow simulation. In the numerical studies, an approach based on the URANS method with using the SA turbulence model was applied. Used spatial approximation of the equations was carried out by the finite volume method with the TVD and WENO reconstruction schemes which is of the second and third order of accuracy respectively. The implicit scheme based on the LU-SGS method was used for the time approximation. Unstructured grid with about 15 million hexagonal cells was used. An investigation of used parallel algorithm efficiency was effectuated using up to 896 cores. The experimental part of the study has been performed at the Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics SB RAS in a supersonic wind tunnel T-325. The measurements in experiments have been carried out with the help of a thermoanemometer. For M = 2, the sounding was carried out at unit Reynolds numbers of 4 and 11 million per meter, for M = 3, the unit Reynolds number was 9, 15 and 18 million per meter, for M = 4 - 17.5 million per meter. Detailed numerical and experimental data has been obtained on the position and dimensions of the vortex core with quantitative data on the distribution of gas-dynamic characteristics of the flow. Numerical data were obtained in wide distance up to 30 chords downstream from a wing axis. Comparisons of numerical and experimental data are carried out.