Numerical investigation on flow and aerothermal characteristics of rarefied hypersonic flows over slender cavities

Flow and aerothermal characteristics of rarefied hypersonic flows passing through slender cavities are investigated comprehensively using the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method by various cases, such as the cavity with different depth-to-width ratios and different inclination angles, and the freestream at different altitudes and Mach numbers. The cavity depth-to-width ratio has a great influence on flow structures and gas density inside the cavity, but a slight effect on gas temperature inside the cavity and on heat flux over cavity surfaces. In comparison to the vertical cavity, the upstream-inclined cavity reduces the gas density and the hightemperature area inside the cavity, showing a decrease rate of gas density of about 53 % for phi = -45 degrees, while the downstream-inclined cavity greatly raises the gas density and slightly expands the high-temperature area, reaching a growth rate of gas density of about 114 % for phi = 45 degrees. As the freestream altitude increases from 50 to 80 km, the main vortex expands remarkably while the heat flux near the top of the aft wall decreases sharply, and a noteworthy finding is that the dimensionless temperature contours inside the cavity for the cases of H = 50, 60, and even 70 km seem to be unchanged. Compared with the case of Ma = 6, the maximum density inside the cavity is increased by about 5.5 times for the case of Ma = 30, and it is about 7.3 times for the maximum temperature inside the cavity. However, raising the freestream Mach number seems to not alter the streamline patterns inside the cavity. The three-dimensional effect reduces the maximum density inside the cavity by about 14.5 % to 17.4 % and results in a smaller main vortex compared with the two-dimensional (2D) cavity, and moreover, the slender cavity can weaken the three-dimensional effect due to its larger depth-to-width ratio and the relatively short cavity width. Besides, the vortex-transport theory is proposed, which can well explain the change of gas density inside the cavity for all cases considered in this work.