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Instabilities in shock-wave–boundary-layer interactions at Mach 6

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2025

Ziming Song
Affiliation:
Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, PR China
Jiaao Hao*
Affiliation:
Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, PR China
*
Corresponding author: Jiaao Hao, jiaao.hao@polyu.edu.hk

Abstract

The flow instabilities in shock-wave–boundary-layer interactions at Mach 6 are comprehensively investigated through compression corner and incident shock cases. The boundary of global stability and the characteristics of globally unstable modes are determined by global stability analysis. In resolvent analysis, cases are categorized into flat plate, no separation, small separation and large separation flows. The optimal response shifts from the first mode in the flat plate case to streaks after the amplification in the interaction region. The amplification of streaks and the first mode (oblique mode) are both attributed to the Görtler instability. Meanwhile, the second mode exhibits minimal growth and higher Mack’s modes appear within the separation bubble. Rounded corner case and linear stability analysis are utilized to further validate the amplification mechanism of the oblique mode.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Classification of the instabilities in SWBLIs.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Computational domains and schematics of (a) incident shock flow and (b) compression corner flow.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Distributions of (a) $C_{\!p}$ for incident shock flows, (b) $C_{\!p}$ for compression corner flows, (c) $C_{\!f}$ for incident shock flows and (d) $C_{\!f}$ for compression corner flows. Circle symbols, separation and reattachment locations; horizontal lines, zero skin friction.

Figure 3

Table 1. Comparison of the separation between compression corner flows and incident shock flows.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Numerical schlieren of (a) incident shock flow at $\theta =5^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ and (b) compression corner flow at $\alpha =10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Variations of eigenvalues of the most unstable modes with spanwise wavenumbers for (a) compression corner flow and (b) incident shock flow. Here S mode, stationary mode; O mode, oscillatory mode; S-O mode, stationary to oscillatory mode; O-S mode, oscillatory to stationary mode.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Real parts of eigenfunction $w'$ for the most unstable modes for $12^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ compression corner flow at (a) ${\beta }L=22$ (S mode) and (b) ${\beta }L=58$ (S-O mode), and for $6.5^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ incident shock flow at (c) ${\beta }L=34$ (S mode), (d) ${\beta }L=72$ (O mode), and (e) ${\beta }L=79$ (O-S mode). Here black lines are for dividing streamlines.

Figure 7

Figure 7. Real parts of eigenfunction $u'$ for the least stable modes at ${\beta }L=0$ for (a) $10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ compression corner flow and (b) $5.5^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ incident shock flow. Here black lines are for streamlines at the edge of the boundary layer.

Figure 8

Figure 8. The optimal gain contours for compression corner flows in the space of spanwise wavenumbers and angular frequencies at (a) $\alpha =0^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (b) $\alpha =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (c) $\alpha =8.1^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ and (d) $\alpha =10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$.

Figure 9

Figure 9. The optimal gain contours for incident shock flows in the space of spanwise wavenumbers and angular frequencies at (a) $\theta =0^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (b) $\theta =2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (c) $\theta =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ and (d) $\theta =5^{\mathrm{\circ }}$.

Figure 10

Figure 10. Contours of (a) suboptimal gain and (b) gain separation between optimal and suboptimal gains for $\alpha =10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ compression corner flow; (c) suboptimal gain and (b) gain separation between optimal and suboptimal gains for $\theta =5^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ incident shock flow.

Figure 11

Figure 11. Optimal responses of streaks with maximum gain for compression corner flows at (a,e) $\alpha =0^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (b,f) $\alpha =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (c,g) $\alpha =8.1^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ and (d,h) $\alpha =10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$; (a–d) spanwise velocity, (e–h) temperature. Here open circles are for separation and reattachment points.

Figure 12

Figure 12. Optimal responses of streaks with maximum gain for incident shock flows at (a,e) $\theta =0^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (b,f) $\theta =2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (c,g) $\theta =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ and (d,h) $\theta =5^{\mathrm{\circ }}$; (a–d) spanwise velocity; (e–h) temperature. Here open circles are for separation and reattachment points.

Figure 13

Figure 13. Distributions of integrated Chu energy for the most amplified streaks at various angles with the curvatures of streamlines at the edge of the boundary layers: (a–c), compression corner flow; (d–f), incident shock flow. Here dash–dotted lines, integrated Chu energy of the flat plate case; vertical dashed lines, separation and reattachment locations; blue dashed lines, growth rates of LST.

Figure 14

Figure 14. Comparison of eigenfunctions of streaks for $\alpha =10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ compression corner flow with ${\beta }L=288$ at (a) $x/L=0.7$, (b) $x/L=1.05$ and (c) $x/L=1.2$. Here horizontal dashed lines are for positions of separation and reattachment shocks.

Figure 15

Figure 15. Comparison of eigenfunctions of streaks for $\theta =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ incident shock flow with ${\beta }L=288$ at (a) $x/L=0.8$, (b) $x/L=1$ and (c) $x/L=1.2$. Here horizontal dashed lines are for positions of separation and reattachment shocks in (a) and (c); position of expansion waves in (b).

Figure 16

Figure 16. Optimal responses of the first mode with maximum gain for compression corner incident shock flows at (a) $\alpha =0^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (b) $\alpha =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (c) $\alpha =8.1^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ and (d) $\alpha =10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$; and for incident shock flow at (e) $\theta =0^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (f) $\theta =2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (g) $\theta =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ and (h) $\theta =5^{\mathrm{\circ }}$. Here open circles are for separation and reattachment points.

Figure 17

Figure 17. Distributions of integrated Chu energy for the most amplified first mode at various angles with the curvatures of streamlines at the edge of the boundary layers: (a–c), compression corner flow; (d–f), incident shock flow. Here dash–dotted lines, Chu energy of the flat plate case; vertical dashed lines, separation and reattachment locations; blue dashed lines, growth rates of LST.

Figure 18

Figure 18. Comparison of eigenfunctions of the first mode for $\alpha =10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ compression corner flow with ${\beta }L=120$ and ${\omega }L/u_{\infty }=16.8$ at (a) $x/L=0.7$, (b)$x/L=1.05$ and (c) $x/L=1.2$. Here horizontal dashed lines are for positions of separation and reattachment shocks.

Figure 19

Figure 19. Comparison of eigenfunctions of the first mode for $\theta =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ incident shock flow with ${\beta }L=96$ and ${\omega }L/u_{\infty }=24$ at (a) $x/L=0.8$, (b) $x/L=1$ and (c) $x/L=1.2$. Here horizontal dashed lines are for positions of separation and reattachment shocks in (a) and (c); position of expansion waves in (b).

Figure 20

Figure 20. Optimal responses of the second mode with maximum gain for compression corner flows at (a) $\alpha =0^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (b) $\alpha =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (c) $\alpha =8.1^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ and (d) $\alpha =10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$; and for incident shock flows at (e) $\theta =0^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (f) $\theta =2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$, (g) $\theta =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ and (h) $\theta =5^{\mathrm{\circ }}$. Here open circles are for separation and reattachment points.

Figure 21

Figure 21. Distributions of integrated Chu energy for the most amplified Mack’s modes at various angles with the curvatures of streamlines at the edge of the boundary layers: (a–c), compression corner flow; (d–f), incident shock flow. Here dash–dotted lines, Chu energy of the flat plate case; vertical dashed lines, separation and reattachment locations; blue dashed lines, growth rates of LST.

Figure 22

Figure 22. Comparison of eigenfunctions of the second mode for $\alpha =10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ compression corner flow with ${\omega }L/u_{\infty }=168$ at (a) $x/L=0.55$, (b) $x/L=1.2$ and (c) $x/L=1.45$. Here horizontal dashed lines are for positions of reattachment shocks.

Figure 23

Figure 23. Comparison of eigenfunctions of the second mode for $\theta =4^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ incident shock flow with ${\omega }L/u_{\infty }=168$ at (a) $x/L=0.6$, (b) $x/L=0.85$ and (c) $x/L=1.2$. Here horizontal dashed lines are for positions of separation and reattachment shocks.

Figure 24

Figure 24. Distributions of (a) skin pressure coefficient and (b) skin friction coefficient for sharp corner and rounded corner cases. Here open circles, separation and reattachment points of sharp corner case; solid circles, tangency points of rounded corner case.

Figure 25

Figure 25. The gain contours for rounded compression corner in the space of spanwise wavenumber and angular frequency of (a) optimal gain, (b) suboptimal gain and (c) gain separation.

Figure 26

Figure 26. Optimal responses with maximum gain for rounded compression corner case: (a) streaks; (b) first mode; (c) second mode. Here open circles are for tangency points.

Figure 27

Figure 27. Distributions of integrated Chu energy for the most amplified (a) streaks, (b) the first mode and (c) the second mode for rounded compression corner flow with the curvature of streamline at the edge of the boundary layers. Here dash–dotted lines, Chu energy of the flat plate case; vertical dashed lines, tangency points of rounded corner case; blue dashed lines, growth rates of LST.

Figure 28

Figure 28. Eigenvalue trajectory at ${\omega }L/u_{\infty }=12$ and ${\beta }L=144$ with decreasing curvature for rounded corner flow at $x/L=1$.

Figure 29

Figure 29. Eigenvalue trajectory of the first mode at (a) ${\beta }L=144$ and $0\leqslant {\omega }L/u_{\infty }\leqslant 12$ and (b) ${\omega }L/u_{\infty }=12$ and $0\leqslant {\beta }L\leqslant 144$ for rounded corner flow at $x/L=1$.

Figure 30

Figure 30. Eigenvalue trajectory of the first mode at (a) ${\beta }L=144$ and $0\leqslant {\omega }L/u_{\infty }\leqslant 12$ and (b) ${\omega }L/u_{\infty }=12$ and $0\leqslant {\beta }L\leqslant 144$ for rounded corner flow at $x/L=0.55$.

Figure 31

Figure 31. Eigenfunctions of typical conditions at $x/L=0.55$: (a) density and (b) streamwise velocity.

Figure 32

Figure 32. Eigenfunctions of typical conditions at $x/L=0.55$: (a) density and (b) streamwise velocity.

Figure 33

Figure 33. The variation of phase speed with spanwise wavenumber.

Figure 34

Figure 34. The skin friction coefficient distributions of different grids for (a) GSA and (b) resolvent analysis.

Figure 35

Figure 35. The eigenvalue spectra from GSA of different grids for (a) $6^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ incident shock flow at ${\beta }L=33.6$ and (b) $12^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ compression ramp flow at ${\beta }L=21.6$.

Figure 36

Figure 36. The optimal gains from resolvent analysis of different grids for (a) $5^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ incident shock flow and (b) $10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ compression ramp flow at different frequencies. Here symbols are for fine grid.

Figure 37

Figure 37. Isosurfaces of the real parts of eigenfunctions $u'$ for $10.2^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ compression ramp flow at (a) $\beta L=22$ (S mode) and (b) $\beta L=58$ (S-O mode), and for $6.5^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ incident shock flow at (c) $\beta L=34$ (S mode), (d) $\beta L=72$ (O mode) and (e) $\beta L=79$ (O-S mode).

Figure 38

Figure 38. The optimal gains as a function of spanwise wavenumber with different forcing locations for $\alpha =8.1^{\mathrm{\circ }}$ compression corner case.