Hypersonic laminar flow over spherically double cone with thermochemical non-equilibrium analysis

During the re-entry of a hypersonic aircraft into the earth’s atmosphere, the surrounding air experiences dissociation, ionization, and other complex chemical phenomena due to extreme temperature by shock wave. To ensure thermal safety, the thermochemical non-equilibrium effects resulting from real-gas behavior should be taken into account. In this paper, the characteristics of a double-cone hypersonic laminar flow, including distributions of wall pressure, heat flux, and species dissociation are numerically analyzed with incoming enthalpy of 9.65–21.77 MJ/kg. The thermochemical non-equilibrium flow at different enthalpy and wall temperatures is performed with two-temperature model and Park’s seven chemical reaction model. It is found that the double-cone flow features complex shock-shock interactions to form triple points. The flow topology is further brought out from the analysis of streamlines. At the lowest incoming enthalpy with isothermal wall conditions, two foci points appear. While others highlight only one focal point. As the increment of incoming enthalpy, the heat flux and dissociation of nitrogen and oxygen also increase. An increasing wall temperature leads to a larger separation bubble and a lower value of heat flux and pressure peak, while massive dissociation occurs without obvious ionization under considered cases.