Numerical Study of a Three Dimensional Interaction between two bow Shock Waves and the Aerodynamic Heating on a Wedge Shaped Nose Cone

This paper presents a numerical investigation on the three-dimensional interaction between two bow shock waves in two environments, i.e. ground high-enthalpy wind tunnel test and real space flight, using Fluent 15.0. The first bow shock wave, also called induced shock wave, which is generated by the leading edge of a hypersonic vehicle. The other bow shock wave can be deemed objective shock wave, which is generated by the cowl clip of hypersonic inlet, and in this paper the inlet is represented by a wedge shaped nose cone. The interaction performances including flow field structures, aerodynamic pressure and heating are analyzed and compared between the ground test and the real space flight. Through the analysis and comparison, we can find the following important phenomena: 1) Three-dimensional complicated flow structures appear in both cases, but only in the real space flight condition, a local two-dimensional type IV interaction appears; 2) The heat flux and pressure in the interaction region are much larger than those in the no-interaction region in both cases, but the peak values of the heat flux and pressure in real space flight are smaller than those in ground test. 3) The interaction region on the objective surface are different in the two cases, and there is a peak value displacement of 3 mm along the stagnation line.