The UTC Graduate School is pleased to announce that Nina Rice will present Master's research titled, Sensitivity Analysis and Simulations of Surface Heating for Hypersonic Cavity Flows on 12/04/2023 at 13:00 in EMCS 415D. Everyone is invited to attend. 

Engineering

Chair: Kidambi Sreenivas

Co-Chair: 

Abstract:
Hypersonic flow over cavities results in instabilities and discontinuities that affect the surface properties, and potentially resulting in surface damage. Simulations were performed using semi-structured 2D meshes in FUN3D with the Spalart-Allmaras and Menter Shear Stress Transport turbulence models at a freestream Mach number of 10. The geometry includes a flat plate and four cavities with length-to-height (L/H) ratios of 0.17, 5, 15, and 30. The surface heating is found to have a strong sensitivity to freestream Reynolds numbers and some sensitivity to a change in the wall temperature. The cavity flow results are compared to Nestler et al.’s experimental data and Holifield’s CFD results. The cavities with an L/H greater than 1 presented a good match to the experimental data for both heating and pressure. The flow did not fully develop at the bottom of the L/H 0.17 gap, resulting in less accurate results close to the cavity floor.