Abstract
At hypersonic speeds, the external wall temperatures of an aerospace vehicle vary significantly. As a result, there is a considerable heat transfer variation between the boundary layer and the wall of the hypersonic vehicle. In this article, numerical computations are performed to investigate the effect of wall temperature on the separation bubble length in laminar hypersonic shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction flows over double-cone configuration at the Mach number of 12.2. The flow field is described in detail in terms of different shocks, expansion fans, shear layer and separation bubble. The variation of the Prandtl number has a negligible effect on the flow field and wall data. A specific heat ratio of less than 1.4 results in the better prediction of wall pressure and heat flux in the shock/boundary-layer interaction region. It is observed that as the wall temperature is increased, the separation bubble size and hence the separation shock length increases. The high firmness of the laminar boundary-layer at a high Mach number shows that the wall temperature in the shock/boundary-layer interaction region has little effect. The peak wall pressure and heat flux decrease with an increase in wall temperature. An estimation is developed between separation bubble length and wall temperature based on the computed results.