Transverse jet injection into a supersonic turbulent cross-flow

Jet injection into a supersonic cross-flow is a challenging fluid dynamics problem in the field of aerospace engineering which has applications as part of a rocket thrust vector control system for noise control in cavities and fuel injection in scramjet combustion chambers. Several experimental and theoretical/numerical works have been conducted to explore this flow; however, there is a dearth of literature detailing the instantaneous flow which is vital to improve the efficiency of the mixing of fluids. In this paper, a sonic jet in a Mach 1.6 free-stream is studied using a finite volume Godunov type implicit large eddy simulations technique, which employs fifth-order accurate MUSCL (Monotone Upstream-centered Schemes for Conservation Laws) scheme with modified variable extrapolation and a three-stage second-order strong-stability-preserving Runge–Kutta scheme for temporal advancement. A digital filter based turbulent inflow data generation method is implemented in order to capture the physics of the supersonic turbulent boundary layer. This paper details the averaged and instantaneous flow features including vortex structures downstream of the jet injection, along with the jet penetration, jet mixing, pressure distributions, turbulent kinetic energy, and Reynolds stresses in the downstream flow. It demonstrates that Kelvin–Helmholtz type instabilities in the upper jet shear layer are primarily responsible for mixing of the two fluids. The results are compared to experimental data and recently performed classical large eddy simulations (LES) with the same initial conditions in order to demonstrate the accuracy of the numerical methods and utility of the inflow generation method. Results here show equivalent accuracy for 1/45th of the computational resources used in the classical LES study.