Supersonic Flow Control Using Combined Energy Deposition

Drag force control via energy deposition in an oncoming flow is a wide area of interest in aerospace sciences. Recently, investigations on the effect of combining energy sources have been conducted. The possibility of coupling microwave (MW) discharges or MW and laser energy deposition is discussed. In the present work, the flow details accompanying the interaction of a combined energy release and an aerodynamic body in a supersonic flow are considered numerically on the base of the Euler equations. Comparison with non-combined energy deposition is analyzed. The effect of introducing the internal part to the energy release on the drag force reduction is examined. The flows for blunt cylinder, hemisphere-cylinder and pointed body are considered for a wide class of the combined energy source characteristics. Freestream Mach number is varied from 1.89 to 3.45. Complicated unsteady vortex structures caused by the Richtmyer–Meshkov instabilities are shown to be the reason for the reduction in drag. The unsteady double vortex mechanism of the frontal drag force reduction and mechanism of the constantly acting vortices at the steady flow are described. Suppression of shear layer instability and large scaled flow pulsations as the result of the combined energy release effect is established. Complex conservative difference schemes are used in the simulations.