Studies of the unsteady supersonic base flows around three afterbodies

Unsteady supersonic base flows around three afterbodies, cylindrical （Cy）, boattailed （BT） and three-step （MS）, are investigated in this paper. Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes （RANS） and two RANS/LES （large-eddy simulation） hybrid methods, detached eddy simulation （DES） and delayed-DES （DDES）, are used to predict the base flow characteristics around the baseline Cy afterbody. All the RANS and hybrid methods are based on the two-equation SST （shear-stress transport） model with compressible corrections （CC）. According to the comparison of measurements, both DES and DDES can produce more satisfactory results than RANS. RANS can only present the ＂stable＂ flow pat- terns, while the hybrid methods can demonstrate unsteady flow structures. DDES and DES results are little different from one another although the latter exhibits better agreement with the experiment. DES is taken to investigate the 5° BT and three-step afterbodies. The mean flow data and the instantaneous turbulent coherent structures are compared against available measurements.