Experimental Study of Turbulence-Chemistry Interactions for a Blunted Wedge at High-Enthalpy

An experimental study involving the interaction between high-temperature real gas effects and turbulence was conducted in the T4 Stalker reflected shock tunnel, using a flat plate model angled 10 degrees to the free stream with a 5mm blunted leading edge. For Air, N2 and a ‘mixture’ of N2 and 10%O2/90%N2 (by volume) test gases, the total enthalpy of the test condition was between 8.3 and 11.3 MJ/kg, with post shock temperatures in excess of 6000K. Subsequently, significant chemical and thermal non-equilibrium conditions were present in the leading edge region. Due to excessively bright post shock region, a high-speed luminosity technique was used to image the shock layer, which showed that the post shock oxygen dissociation in the air results in reduced shock standoff distances for the Air and mixture test gases as compared to the N2 test gas. Preliminary, heat transfer results show that transition for a wedge geometry occurs between 0.9 and 1.2 million Reynolds number, however further analysis is required.