A Numerical Investigation of Localized and Steady Energy Addition to High Speed Airflows

Abstract

This work presents a numerical analysis of the gas dynamic problem of localized and steady energy addition to uniform high-speed airflows. Firstly, the general effects caused by a localized energy deposition on the flow were investigated, then an extensive parametric analysis concerning the effects of energy deposition rate and dispersion for different free stream flow speeds was performed. As a general result, localized and steady energy deposition generates compression waves and constant property flow stream tube downstream to the source. The parametric analysis results have shown that either increasing the rate or decreasing dispersion in the orthogonal direction to the flow of the deposited energy has the effect of enhancing property flow changes, which is even more pronounced for lower flow speeds. In contrast, energy dispersion in the flow direction has presented very little effect on the flow changes. The results of this numerical analysis should be very helpful in studies of energy addition applications in hypersonic.