Study of Side-Jet Interactions over a Hypersonic Cone Flow Using Kinetic Methods

The interaction between the hypersonic flow over a cone and a side jet creates complex multiple recirculation regions as well as separation, reattachment, and bow shocks known as Edney type-IV shock/shock interactions. The interactions between these multiscale structures are shown to be well captured with the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method, which is a particle-kinetic approach. This computational technique was used because even though the freestream conditions were continuumlike, sufficiently strong gradients in the shock and jet expansion were observed to cause continuum breakdown. The time-accurate DSMC approach has been shown in previous work to capture the multiscale structures and unsteadiness in the shock structure that occurs in such flows, as was also observed in this work. These sources of unsteadiness in the shock system are shown to locally affect surface parameters, such as heat transfer and skin friction, as well as predict a low–frequency unsteadiness consistent with earlier values in the literature.