Modal Instabilities over Blunted Cones at Angle of Attack in Hypersonic Flow

The effects of nose radius and angle of attack on the linear modal amplification over blunt circular cones at hypersonic speeds are computationally investigated. The three-dimensional laminar flow solutions over a 1.5-m-long, 7°-half-angle cone with 5.080, 9.525, and 25.40 mm nosetip radii are computed for selected angle-of-attack values and freestream conditions that match the Mach 10 experiments at a freestream unit Reynolds number of 17.1 million per meter conducted within the Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9 at the Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC). Results indicate that the linear amplification of stationary and traveling crossflow waves along inflection lines increases with the angle of attack and decreases with the nosetip radius. The trend in transition front with respect to increasing angle of attack and bluntness is found to be consistent with the predicted increase in the amplification factors for Mack’s second mode (MM) disturbances along the streamline trajectories for the small and medium bluntness cases. The increase in the MM amplification along the windward ray for higher angles of attack is shown to be the result of a progressively earlier entropy-layer swallowing. Computations also indicate that the transition amplification factor along the windward ray increases with the angle of attack and decreases with the nosetip radius. Furthermore, the transition [Formula: see text]-factors along the leeward ray are below 2 and, therefore, rather small to lead to transition.