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Washington University in St. Louis

Validation of CFD Simulations for Hypersonic Flow Over a Yawed Cone

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

<p>This study aims to numerically simulate the wind tunnel results for hypersonic flow over a circular cone of semi-apex angle of 10 degrees yawed from 0° to 20° using the commercial computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS Fluent. The ANSYS workbench is used to create the 10° semi-apex circular cone with a shock aligned structured mesh of 3.05 million cells surrounding the cone. Simulation boundary conditions for pressure and temperature in the far field correspond to Tracy’s wind tunnel experiment at Cal Tech. The six simulations cases are conducted for yaw angles of 0, 8, 12, 16, 20 and 24 degrees. The unsteady Reynolds-Averaged compressible Navier-Stokes solver with Spalart-Allmaras (SA) turbulence model is employed. The upstream flow Mach number is M = 8 and Reynolds number is Reꝏ = 4.2 x10<sup>5</sup> based on cone generator length. The maximum variation in static pressure computations around the cone is 7% of the experimental values and the maximum variation in heat transfer computations is within 12% of the experimental values; the maximum difference between the computations and experiment occurs at the leeward meridian of the cone. By further refinement of the mesh and using other turbulence models, it is possible that computational accuracy of the simulations may be further improved; however it requires additional investigation. Nevertheless the present simulations demonstrate that CFD can be employed with sufficient accuracy to compute the hypersonic flows about space vehicles with fully turbulent flow.</p>

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science (MS)
Level thesis:degree_level
Thesis
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Year dc:date.available
2018

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Cecil, Julian
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Ramesh K. Agarwal
  • David A. Peters Swami Karunamoorthy

Subjects

dc:subject × 7

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • I have not registered my thesis with the U.S. Copyright Office, and do not intend to.
Language dc:language
English (en)

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:openscholarship.wustl.edu:eng_etds-1369

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Washington University in St. Louis
Base URL
openscholarship.wustl.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Cecil, Julian. Validation of CFD Simulations for Hypersonic Flow Over a Yawed Cone. Thesis thesis, 2018. https://doi.org/10.7936/K7NG4Q22