Numerical investigation of transitional supersonic axisymmetric wakes

Abstract

Transitional supersonic axisymmetric wakes are investigated by conducting various numerical experiments. The main objective is to identify hydrodynamic instability mechanisms in the flow at M = 2.46 for several Reynolds numbers, and to relate these to coherent structures that are found from various visualization techniques. The premise for this approach is the assumption that flow instabilities lead to the formation of coherent structures. Three high-order accurate compressible codes were developed in cylindrical coordinates for this work: a spatial Navier-Stokes (N-S) code to conduct direct numerical simulations (DNS), a linearized N-S code for linear stability investigations using axisymme..