A Study of Highly Underexpanded Supersonic Jets in Subsonic Crossflow
Numerical and empirical solutions were compared to experimental results for under-expanded supersonic jets penetrating normally into a subsonic crossflow. The injector jet trajectory was determined experimentally through Pitot probe surveys. Numerical solutions were obtained through FUN3D (a 3-D Unstructured Navier Stokes solver) for nine cases where the injector ‘jet Mach number’ ranged from 1.38 to 3.29 while the crossflow was maintained at a constant Mach number of 0.275. Four different turbulence models were used in the numerical study: Spalart-Allmaras (SA), Shear-Stress-Transport (SST), ‘SA-Neg’, and ‘SST-V’. At a low supersonic jet Mach number, the four turbulence models produced similar results. At higher Mach numbers, only the SA produced a converged solution, however, the numerically determined jet trajectories deviated noticeably from the experimental data as the injector jet Mach number increased. The numerical and experimental results were compared to four empirical formulae found in the literature. All four were inadequate in predicting the jet trajectories for the operating conditions reported in this study. Two of the empirical formulae were modified to bring the predictions within reasonable agreement with the experimental data.