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Virginia Tech

Assessment of RANS Turbulence Models for Hypersonic Flat Plates

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Many hypersonic flow applications have cold walls, where the wall temperature is significantly less than the recovery, or adiabatic, temperature. Current Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes and Favre-Averaged Navier-Stokes approaches using linear eddy viscosity models for turbulence were not designed and optimized with hypersonic flow problems in mind, and thus have weaknesses that are continuously being studied and addressed. This study evaluates the performance of the Menter Shear Stress Transport (SST) and Spalart–Allmaras (SA) models on a group of hypersonic flat plate cases from a recent direct numerical simulation (DNS) database. Quantities of interest examined include velocity, temperature, turbulent kinetic energy, modeled turbulent kinetic energy budget terms, eddy viscosity, Reynolds stresses, heat fluxes, wall skin friction, wall heat transfer, and Reynolds analogy factor. Generally, the SA model performs better than the SST model in capturing the quantities of interest, but higher Mach number can occasionally reduce the accuracy of SA. Both models generally have increased errors in the quantities of interest with lower temperature ratio, with the SST model having a considerable sensitivity to lower temperature ratio. SST significantly underpredicts turbulent kinetic energy, fails at predicting key turbulent kinetic energy budget terms, and the Boussinesq approximation fails in capturing Reynolds normal stresses. For wall quantities, both models generally have increased errors at the lowest and highest Reynolds numbers studied, with the skin friction having increased errors with lower temperature ratio.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Aerospace Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Aerospace and Ocean Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2025

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Vaughan, Joshua Clinton
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Roy, Christopher John
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Massa, Luca
  • Lowe, Kevin T.

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:44415
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/137553

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Vaughan, Joshua Clinton. Assessment of RANS Turbulence Models for Hypersonic Flat Plates. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2025. https://hdl.handle.net/10919/137553