Probing Real Gas and Leading-Edge Bluntness Effects on Shock Wave Boundary-Layer Interaction at Hypersonic Speeds

The present investigations are centered on understanding the discrepancies in shock wave boundary-layer interaction (SWBLI) for perfect and real gas laminar flows. In view of this, the in-house-developed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers are integrated with a gradient-based optimization algorithm to predict the critical radii of SWBLI in the case of perfect and real gas flows. The developed high-fidelity approach has been observed to be useful in the precise estimation of critical radii of bluntness. Further, studies for SWBLI revealed that real gas effects reduce the extent of separation in comparison with the perfect gas flow and also necessitate lower magnitudes of critical radii. It has been noted that a reduced requirement of a high entropy layer thickness and upstream overpressure region demonstrate a need for a lower value of inversion and equivalent radii for real gas flow conditions. Therefore, a larger estimate of the equivalent radius of SWBLI, obtained for perfect gas flow conditions, or any radius larger than that would definitely provide the necessary separation control for real gas flows.