Calculations on the hypersonic Rayleigh problem

Abstract

The Rayleigh problem is a conceptual experiment in which a fluid is set in motion entirely by viscous entertainment with a moving solid boundary. Thus no part of the field responds to an inviscid analysis.The compressible case is one of very great difficulty if the boundary speed is large, because mathematically it becomes a “free boundary” problem with singularities in the solution in the neighbourhood of both the free and solid boundary which necessarily inhibit all efforts to impose boundary conditions upon them.Transformations to put the problem into a numerically tractable form are discussed.