Direct Numerical Simulation of a Hypersonic Turbulent Boundary Layer on a Large Domain

The direct numerical simulation (DNS) of a spatially-developing hypersonic turbulent boundary layer is presented. The freestream Mach number is M∞ = 7.2. The simulation is performed on a large computational domain resulting in a variation of Reynolds number based on momentum thickness from a value of Reθ = 1650 at the inlet of the domain to Reθ = 3300 at the outlet. A large rescaling length is used in the prescription of the inflow boundary condition to minimize spurious numerical correlation between the inflow and recycling plane. The evolution of boundary layer parameters and basic statistics with streamwise distance through the computational box is investigated. An effect of the wall temperature condition in the DNS (cold wall) on the behavior of the boundary layer is observed.