High-Fidelity Simulations of Three-Dimensional Shock Wave/Boundary Layer Interactions on Compression Corners

Shock wave/Boundary Layer Interactions (SBLIs) are a typical hallmark of high-speed aerodynamics, since they occur in all practical transonic, supersonic and hypersonic vehicles. SBLI often cause extensive reversed flow, with associated low-frequency unsteady pressure loads generated from the reflected shock motion. While most SBLI studies focus on two-dimensional configurations, where the shock impingement line is orthogonal to the incoming flow, many practical applications deal with three-dimensional interactions. According to general wisdom, upstream and downstream mechanisms drive low-frequency unsteadiness in 2D SBLIs, whereas the driving mechanism in 3D SBLIs is still under debate. In this work, we carry out high-fidelity numerical simulations of three-dimensional supersonic turbulent compression corners. The simulation campaign is carried out with FLEW, an in-house high-fidelity solver developed at La Sapienza University of Rome. The solver relies on the hybridization of high-order skew-symmetric central finite difference in smooth regions, and WENO schemes in shocked ones. Generalized curvilinear coordinates are employed to discretize the computational domain. The simulations data is leveraged to gain physical insights on the nature of pressure fluctuations across the interaction region, and obtain typical frequency scales.