Numerical Investigation of Liquid Droplet Interactions with Cylindrical Bow Shocks

Precipitation and suspended droplets in the atmosphere present a significant erosion risk to vehicles traveling at high-supersonic and hypersonic speeds. We will present the results of simulations considering the interactions of droplets with blunt projectiles in a high-supersonic (Mach 2-4) flow environment. We use a volume of fluid method implemented in the compressibleInterFoam solver of OpenFOAM to simulate the interaction of a water droplet with the bow shock generated by a cylindrical blunt body. The droplet size and freestream Mach number are varied to determine the regimes where direct impact, partial impact, or no impact occur as governed by the degree of droplet breakup driven by aerodynamic forces in the shock layer.