Influence of blunt-cone tip temperature on the laminar-turbulent transition in hypersonic boundary layers

In the present paper, we report on the results of a combined experimetal and numerical study of the laminar-turbulent transition at Mach number 5.95 in the boundary layers of 7-deg cones with a small nose-tip bluntness radius (down to 1.5 mm). The tip temperature of the model was varied in the range from 90 to 440 K. It was confirmed that the small nose-tip bluntness substantially shifts the position of the transition in downstream direction. This effect was also retained in testing the models with local heating/cooling of the cone tip. It is shown that for the experimental conditions implemented in the Transit-M wind tunnel, ITAM SB RAS, the local heating of blunt cone tips exerts almost no influence on the position of the transition. The local cooling of the cone tip with R = 1.5 mm leads to a shift of the transition position in upstream direction.