Heat transfer and wall temperature effects in shock wave turbulent boundary layer interactions

Direct numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the effect of the wall temperature on the behavior of oblique shock wave turbulent boundary layer interactions at free-stream Mach number 2.28 and shock angle of the wedge generator phi = 8 degrees. Five values of the wall-to-recovery-temperature ratio (T-w/T-r) are considered, corresponding to cold, adiabatic, and hot wall thermal conditions. We show that the main effect of cooling is to decrease the characteristic scales of the interaction in terms of upstream influence and extent of the separation bubble. The opposite behavior is observed in the case of heating, which produces a marked dilatation of the interaction region. The distribution of the Stanton number shows that a strong amplification of the heat transfer occurs across the interaction, with the maximum thermal and dynamic loads found for the case of the cold wall. The analysis reveals that the fluctuating heat flux exhibits a strong intermittent behavior, characterized by scattered spots with extremely high values compared to the mean. Furthermore, the analogy between momentum and heat transfer, typical of compressible, wall-bounded, equilibrium turbulent flows, does not apply for most of the interaction domain. The premultiplied spectra of the wall heat flux do not show any evidence of the influence of the low-frequency shock motion, and the primary mechanism for the generation of peak heating is found to be linked with the turbulence amplification in the interaction region.