Slip effects on the receptivity of supersonic flat-plate boundary layer to freestream acoustic waves

The receptivity phase located upstream from the neutral point might be significantly affected by local rarefaction effects (especially surface slip effects) in terms of the boundary-layer transition of near-space hypersonic vehicles. In this paper, the receptivity of a supersonic flat-plate boundary layer to freestream acoustic waves in no-slip and slip flows is analyzed using direct numerical simulations and linear stability theory. The Maxwell–Smoluchowski velocity-slip and temperature-jump boundary conditions are adopted at the wall to account for surface slip effects. A Mach 4.5 flow at different wall-cooling degrees is mainly analyzed, and another Mach-6 case is presented, both with freestream unit Reynolds number on the order of 1×106/m. The main goal is to clarify the qualitative and quantitative influence of surface slip effects on the receptivity phase under different conditions. The results show that the receptivity mechanism in the slip flow is similar to that in the no-slip flow. That is, the mode S or F is excited near the leading edge due to synchronization with slow or fast acoustic waves, and the Mack second mode is excited further downstream after synchronization between modes S and F. However, the slip effects lead to distinctly quantitative differences in receptivity. The slip effects have little influence on the excitation of mode S or F near the leading edge but largely affect the evolution (intermodal exchange) of modes S and F as propagating downstream. Consequently, as for the receptivity to slow acoustic waves, the slip effects play a stabilizing role in receptivity when mode S is stable while a destabilizing role when mode S converts to the first mode in the upstream. As for receptivity to fast acoustic waves, as slip degree increases, the slip effects initially stabilize and then destabilize the receptivity, where the receptivity coefficient of the tested slip case can increase by 25% compared with the no-slip case.