Numerical Simulation of Conical and Spherical Shock Interaction: Hysteresis Investigations

In the literature, we can find lot of analytical or numerical studies about shock wave interaction. However, in the major part of this work, the two dimensional assumption is used [1]-[4]. Although we know that in real flight conditions the interaction is at least axisymmetrical or three dimensional, we have also chosen to deal with axisymmetrical interaction. Indeed, the comprehension of the axisymmetrical phenomena is needed before taken into account a more realistic three dimensional case. Thus, in the present paper, we have numerically studied the interaction between a shock generated by a conical ring and a shock generated by a sphere (respectively called the conical and spherical shock). A schematic description of the study case is given by the figure 1. The inlet conditions are:M =4.96, T =77 K and P=1700 Pa. The preliminary results on this topic have been presented in [5] and [6].