Interaction of weak free-stream disturbance with an oblique shock: validation of the shock-capturing method

Transition prediction is of great importance for the design of long distance flying vehicles. It starts from the problem of receptivity, i.e., how external disturbances trigger instability waves in the boundary layer. For super/hypersonic boundary layers, the external disturbances first interact with the shock ahead of the flying vehicles before entering the boundary layer. Since direct numerical simulation (DNS) is the only available tool for its comprehensive and detailed investigation, an important problem arises whether the numerical scheme, especially the shock-capturing method, can faithfully reproduce the interaction of the external disturbances with the shock, which is so far unknown. This paper is aimed to provide the answer. The interaction of weak disturbances with an oblique shock is investigated, which has a known theoretical solution. Numerical simulation using the shock-capturing method is conducted, and results are compared with those given by theoretical analysis, which shows that the adopted numerical method can faithfully reproduce the interaction of weak external disturbances with the shock.