Numerical and theoretical analysis of aerodynamic surface heating on various nose profiles in supersonic flow using an open-ended shock tube

This study presents a computational investigation of the transient flow field and aerodynamic heating characteristics of different nose profiles in a two-dimensional (2D) axisymmetric open-ended shock tube using ANSYS Fluent. The investigation focuses on shock-wave propagation and the resulting aerodynamic and thermal response under transient supersonic flow conditions. Five nose profiles, namely 1/2 Power, 3/4 Parabola, Von Karman, Tangent Ogive and Cone, are comparatively evaluated. The external/local shock Mach number, M s , ext . = 1.58 ahead of the nose, is in good agreement with the theoretically predicted value of 1.50, showing a deviation of only 5.3%, while the numerical bow-shock stand-off distance of 2.67 mm differs by only 3.8% from the theoretical value. The stagnation-point temperature obtained numerically was 413 K, compared with the theoretical value of 424.89 K. The corresponding area-weighted average stagnation heat flux ranged from 181 to 206 kW / m 2 , compared with the Fay–Riddell estimation of 225 kW / m 2 . Among the investigated nose configurations, the area-weighted average surface heat flux decreases from 114.33 kW / m 2 for the conical nose to 78.81 kW / m 2 for the tangent-ogive nose, representing a maximum reduction of approximately 31.1%. The results show the significant influence of nose geometry on transient aerodynamic heating and show the usefulness of the open-ended shock-tube computational fluid dynamics (CFD) framework for comparative assessment of aerodynamic thermal loads under the present short-duration supersonic flow conditions.