Evaluation of Various Turbulence Models for RANS Computations of Supersonic Flow in a Compression Corner

The compression corners are simple geometries but rich in flow-features that can be challenging for accurate prediction of their flow fields in high-speed compressible flow using the Reynold-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations in conjunction with a turbulence model. At higher degrees of corner angles, there exists a shockboundary layer interaction region which includes a significant recirculation zone in the corner. In this paper, experimentally available test cases for compression corner at Mach 3, 8, and 11 at various corner angles are modeled as 2D planar geometries and are simulated using the ANSYS Fluent. Results are compared to the experimental studies for the same flow conditions from Settles et al. and Smits and Muck at Mach 2.85 and from Holden et al. at Mach 8 and Mach 11 for various corner angles. The Spalart-Allmaras (SA), SST k-ω, and Wray-Agarwal (WA) turbulence models are employed in the study. The surface static pressure, heat transfer rate, and separation bubble in the corner are compared between the simulations and the experiments. Generally, it was found that the SA model’s accuracy begins to falter at the higher corner angles (> 20+ degrees). It was found that SST k-ω and WA models are suitable for these flow conditions, as they can reproduce the trends seen in the experimental static pressure measurements. Additionally, it was found that the WA model shows good behavior in generating the major recirculation region that is present in the corner for the higher corner angles (>20+ degrees).