Effect of thermally induced perturbation in supersonic boundary layers

This paper investigates the mechanism of steady and unsteady thermal perturbation (also denoted as thermal bump) in a Mach 1.5 flat plate boundary layer. A high-fidelity upwind-biased third-order Roe scheme is used with the compressive van Leer harmonic limiter on a suitably refined mesh. The study consists of two parts. In the first part, the effects of the steady and pulsed thermal bumps are explored. It is shown that the finite-span thermal bumps generate streamwise vortices. With steady heating, the disturbance decays downstream. However, when the thermal bump is pulsed, vortex shedding is observed and the streamwise vortical disturbance grows with downstream distance, consistent with linear stability analysis. The integrated disturbance energy indicates that streamwise kinetic disturbance energy growth dominates over those associated with other two velocity and thermodynamic components. The second part of this paper explores the physical consequences of the nonlinear dynamics between the vortices produced by the pulsed bump and the compressible boundary layer. The resulting three-dimensional flow distortion generates hairpin structures which are aligned in the streamwise direction, suggesting that the transition process bears some similarity to K-type breakdown. The arrangement of these vortices is connected to the low-speed streaks observed in the evolving boundary layer. The shape factor, velocity, and Reynolds stress profiles suggest that the perturbed flow shows initiation of transition to turbulence, but remains transitional at the end of the plate.