Shock Bifurcation Phenomenon in the Reflected Shock/Boundary Layer Interaction

Abstract

This primary objective of this paper is to study the unsteady characteristics in the reflected shock wave/boundary layer interaction in an end-wall shock tube by a numerical simulation. It is discovered that the shock bifurcation mainly consists of a leading bifurcated shock, a recirculation region and a tail shock. Especially the shape of the entire recirculation zone seems like a crooked earthworm and the vortices in the rear of recirculation region continuously drop off from the walls when the shock bifurcation moves forwards. By analyzing the flow turbulent properties in the bifurcation, the turbulent intensity in the stream-wise direction is dominant in both value and direction, and the distribution of Reynolds shear stress becomes obviously asymmetric, which indicates an underlying instability of the shock bifurcation.