Experimental Investigation of Shock Wave/Boundary Layer Interactions over an Artificially Heated Model in Hypersonic Flow

Experimental tests have been carried out to analyze the effect of wall-to-total temperature ratio on the characteristics of a fully laminar shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction in a Mach 6 high enthalpy flow. Test cases were run in a new high-enthalpy arc-heated wind tunnel developed at Centrospazio in the framework of the ESA/FESTIP program. In order to heat-up the model surface a high temperature radiator movable on a remotely controlled displacement system was employed. As the investigation was focused on local dynamic and thermal loads, the model was instrumented with pressure transducers and thin film gauges. The experimental results were compared with numerical simulations carried out at CIRA on the same test cases. Pressure measurements showed a fair agreement with numerics, even if the accuracy of the measurements did not allow to discriminate the differences within the different wall temperature cases numerically calculated. Heat flux data are consistently higher than what calculated by CIRA: further investigation is presently under way to identify the reason of this difference, however the main reason is believed to be related to relaxation phenomena of the frozen flow on the model surface. Additional investigation aimed at evaluating the importance of this effect are presently underway.