Particle-Impingement Simulations for a Blunt Cone in Hypersonic Flow

The laminar to turbulent transition process in hypersonic boundary layer flows signif- icantly affects heat transfer rates and understanding this process is vital for the design of hypersonic vehicles. This research focuses on the first stage of many in the highly- complex multi-stage transition process, namely the receptivity process. Recent studies have shown that for sufficiently large particles and a large enough particle concentration particle-induced transition may provide a viable path to turbulence. While prior research was mainly concerned with the excitation of modal disturbances inside the boundary layer this work investigates if particles can induce non-modal growth. The geometry and flow conditions were chosen in accordance to the work by Paredes et al. 31 who observed non- modal growth for the chosen setup. Direct numerical simulations were performed with an established adaptive mesh refinement wave-packet tracking simulation approach which allows to efficiently track the disturbance flow field. The flow structures generated by the particle impingement show close similarities to those which have been observed in Paredes et al.