Drag and heat reduction mechanism induced by a combinational novel cavity and counterflowing jet concept in hypersonic flows

The drag and heat reduction problem of hypersonic reentry vehicles has always attracted the attention worldwide, and many novel schemes have been proposed recently. In the current study, the research progress of the combinational configuration of the forward-facing cavity and the counterflowing jet has been reviewed, and the conventional cavity configuration has been substituted by an approximate maximum thrust nozzle contour for better heat and surface pressure reduction efficiency. The Reynolds-average of Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations coupled with the SST k-ω turbulence model have been employed to calculate its surrounding flow fields. A validation metric and the grid convergence index (GCI) have been employed to conduct the turbulence model assessment and the grid independence analysis respectively. The axisymmetric assumption has been verified by three-dimensional computational results as well. The obtained results show that the SST k-ω model is more suitable for the novel drag and heat flux reduction scheme proposed in this article, and the axisymmetric assumption is approximately reasonable. After investigating the influence of jet pressure ratio, the novel combinational configuration has been verified to be more effective in heat and surface pressure reduction, and this is because the approximate maximum thrust nozzle contour contributes to better expansion and avoids total pressure loss of the jet.