The Turbulence Structure of Shockwave and Boundary Layer Interaction in a Compression Corner

Shockwave and turbulent boundary layer interactions (STBLI) result in intense localized heating rates and pressure loads, making them extremely important flow features that must be identified for engineering design. The absence of detailed and complete experimental and numerical data at the same flow and boundary conditions is one of the major stumbling blocks in the development of accurate turbulence models for the prediction of STBLI. We use a set of direct numerical simulation data (Wu & Martin, 2006) that has been validated against experiments (Bookey et al., 2005) at the same conditions to present detailed flow features of the STBLI over a compression corner at Mach 3 and low Reynolds number with Reθ=2100. Details regarding the evolution of the turbulence structure angle, characteristic streamwise length scales, and hairpin packets through the interaction are presented. The three-dimensionality of the turbulence field and main shock are illustrated and the strength of shocks and shocklets through the interaction are considered