Nonlinear Evolution of Instabilities in a Laminar Separation Bubble at Hypersonic Speeds

The development of both convective stationary perturbation and global instabilities in the vicinity of a laminar separation bubble above an axisymmetric compression corner in hypersonic flow was investigated using numerical simulations. The flow configuration of interest corresponded to the cone–cylinder–flare model used in experimental measurements in the Boeing/U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research Mach-6 Quiet Tunnel (BAMQT) at Purdue University. For a flare angle of 10 deg and unit Reynolds number of [Formula: see text], their surface flow visualizations identified the presence of streamwise elongated thermal streaks near the reattachment location that had a dominant azimuthal wave number [Formula: see text]. Previous linear stability analyses predicted that the amplification characteristics of small-amplitude, unsteady, and convective instabilities within this flow were consistent with the surface pressure fluctuations measured in the experiment. However, their accompanying investigation of global instabilities showed that the separation bubble was weakly unstable at the 10 deg flare angle, with the most unstable global mode corresponding to a stationary disturbance with [Formula: see text] (i.e., well below the measured wave number of [Formula: see text]. Besides characterizing the global instability for selected flare angles, the present numerical simulations quantify the details of the stationary equilibrium state associated with supercritical bifurcation resulting from the nonlinear saturation of the unstable global mode. Although velocity perturbations associated with the saturated global mode are dominated by the fundamental spanwise wavelength associated with the linear global instability, the surface heat flux downstream of the reattachment is dominated by [Formula: see text], in agreement with the experimental measurements.