Wall-Resolved LES Turbulence Investigations of BoLT-II Hypersonic Vehicle

Wall-Resolved Large-Eddy Simulations (WRLES) of the flow over the BoLT-II hypersonic flight vehicle are performed at a Mach 6 condition along the flight trajectory. The vehicle has highly swept leading edges, spanwise surface concavity and significant bow-shock curvature. The flow over the vehicle is highly three-dimensional with multiple instabilities that modify the boundary layer (BL) energy balance. We demonstrate the successful generation of grids that support the stability of WRLES and present the detailed flow data with particular interest in the analysis of the 3D turbulent BL, which show departure from canonical 2D BL theory, energy injection by the inviscid vortical structures, and scale interactions between the inviscid flow and the turbulent BL. The large scale in the BoLT2 flow environment is described. The hypersonic turbulent boundary layer flow is characterized using the spectrally resolved high-fidelity simulation data.