Leading edge flow by the Monte Carlo direct simulation technique

The flow near the leading edge of a sharp flat plate is studied by means of a Monte Carlo molecular simulation. This technique consists of following, by digital computation, the motion of a representative set of molecules flowing past the body while collisions are computed by statistical sampling. Flowfield properties and plate surface fluxes are presented for a monatomic gas for several molecular models: hard spheres and point centers of inverse power repulsion. The gas-surface interaction law used was a prescribed mixture of diffuse and specular reflection. Mach number was varied from 5.5 to 29.2 and both insulated and cooled plates were studied. Plate length relative to the freestream mean free path was varied from 10 to 88. For the longer plates the flow over much of the plate is that for a semiinfinite plate. Comparisons are made between these results and experimental data.