A combined experimental and numerical study of flow structures over three-dimensional shock control bumps

A detailed study of transonic flow over three-dimensional bumps has been conducted using experimental measurements and computational simulation. The aim of the investigation is to determine the flow characteristics over these potentially effective flow control devices for wave drag reduction for transonic aircraft wings. Careful qualitative and quantitative matching of the simulation and experimental conditions has considerably improved the agreement between them. In both the experiments and the computation, the shock position in the working section was found to be sensitive not only to the back pressure and the sidewall effects, but also to the incoming boundary layer characteristics. Two turbulence models, a modified Baldwin–Lomax model with enhanced performance in separated flow (curvature model) and a two-equation model (k–ω) have been implemented in the numerical simulation. Overall, both turbulence models gave reasonable results for the uncontrolled and controlled cases regarding the inviscid flowfield and the shock structure. In particular, a pair of streamwise vortices embedded in the boundary layer was captured by the two models. The traces in the surface oil flow pictures from the experiment also suggested the existence of the streamwise vortices. The combined surface and flowfield data provide some further insight into the flow physics on the shock control ramp bump, which is discussed in the paper. In addition, the study also demonstrates the enhanced capability of the algebraic model in capturing separated flow features with lower computational cost as compared to the k–ω model.