Investigation of hypersonic flat-plate boundary-layer transition by direct numerical simulation

Investigations on laminar-turbulent transition for high-speed flows at hypersonic Mach-numbers will be presented. Dissociation takes place above a temperature of T > 2000K within the boundary layer, a temperature which is reached easily at Mach-numbers above M = 5. Additional degrees of freedom for the energy, must be taken into account by employing a vibrational energy equation. Chemical reactions take place which are modeled by a, 5-species model proposed by Park [Par89]. Further details oil the chemical modeling call be found ill [Ste02, Ste03]. Controlled disturbances call be introduced by means of a disturbance strip at the wall which is also capable to model point source disturbances. Results will be shown for free-flight conditions at an altitude of H=50Km and at a speed of M=20. Experiments for qualitative validation of the results are available in [MM00].