Injection and mixing in a scramjet combustor: DES and RANS studies

The low momentum flux ratio jet in the HyShot II scramjet combustor is studied by DES (Detached Eddy Simulation) and RANS (Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes) methods. The flow structure near the injector, shock pattern in the symmetry plane as well as the instantaneous coherent structures are presented and explained. Further insight into the flow physics is obtained by visualizing instantaneous coherent structures. The formation of Ω-shaped vortices, which was previously observed in experiments but never well-studied numerically, is discussed in detail. A new schematic of flow physics is proposed to enhance the understanding of the low momentum flux ratio jet. Compared to the DES result, the RANS method is unable to capture the dynamics of turbulent structures. The DES method provides much detailed information about mixing patterns and a more reliable mixing efficiency than the RANS result. The RANS method over-predicts the eddy-viscosity during turbulence modeling and suppresses unsteady turbulent fluctuations by time averaging, which results in a 25% over-estimation of the mixing efficiency.