Aerothermoelastic Simulation of a Sharp-Fin Induced Shock Wave/Boundary-Layer Interaction in a Mach 6 Flow

The thermo-mechanical response caused by shock/boundary-layer interactions is an important phenomenon to consider in the design of hypersonic vehicles, yet only recently has been studied. A common configuration considered is a sharp fin mounted on a flat plate, which induces a three-dimensional shock/boundary-layer interaction. In this study, the effects of this swept-shock/boundary-layer interaction grazing over a thin, thermally- and mechanically-compliant panel are investigated for a Mach 6 flow. Unsteady RANS-based simulations using SU2 are completed for simulating the fluid domain. The thermal- and mechanical-response of the thin panel is calculated using a finite element approximation built upon the MFEM library. The solvers are fully-coupled in time using preCICE. Effects of the fluid-thermal-structural interaction on the flowfield and the panel are characterized.