In the present contribution we evaluate the heat flux prediction capabilities of second-order accurate Residual Distribution (RD) methods in the context of atmospheric (re-)entry problems around blunt bodies. Our departing point is the computation of subsonic air flows (with air modeled either as an inert ideal gas or as chemically reacting and possibly out of thermal equilibrium gas mixture) around probe-like geometries, as those typically employed into high enthalpy wind tunnels. We confirm the agreement between the solutions obtained with the RD method and the solutions computed with other Finite Volume (FV) based codes.

However, a straightforward application of the same numerical technique to hypersonic cases involving strong shocks exhibits severe deficiencies even on a geometry as simple as a 2D cylinder. In an attempt to mitigate this problem, we derive new variants of RD schemes. A comparison of these alternative strategies against established ones allows us to derive a diagnose for the shortcomings observed in the traditional RD schemes.

In this paper, direct numerical simulation (DNS) is presented for spatially evolving turbulent boundary layer over an isothermal flat-plate at Ma∞ = 2.25,5,6,8. When Ma∞ = 8, two cases with the ratio of wall-to-reference temperature Tω/T∞ = 1.9 and 10.03 are considered respectively. The wall temperature approaches recovery temperatures for other cases. The characteristics of compressible turbulent boundary layer (CTBL) affected by freestream Mach number and wall temperature are investigated. It focuses on assessing compressibility effects and the validity of Morkovin's hypothesis through computing and analyzing the mean velocity profile, turbulent intensity, the strong Reynolds analogy (SRA) and possibility density function of dilatation term. The results show that, when the wall temperature approaches recovery temperature, the effects of Mach number on compressibility is insignificant. As a result, the compressibility effect is very weak and the Morkovin's hypothesis is still valid for Mach number even up to 8. However, when Mach number equal to 8, the wall temperature effect on the compressibility is sensitive. In this case, when Tω/T∞ = 1.9, the Morkovin's hypothesis is not fully valid. The validity of classical SRA depends on wall temperature directly. A new modified SRA is proposed to eliminate such negative factor in near wall region. Finally the effects of Mach number and wall temperature on streaks are also studied.

A multi-dimensionally upwind conservative Residual Distribution algorithm for simulating viscous axisymmetric hypersonic flows in thermo-chemical nonequilibrium on unstructured grids is presented and validated in the case of the complex flow-field over a double cone configuration. The resulting numerical discretization combines a state-of-the-art nonlinear quasi-monotone second order blended scheme for distributing the convective residual and a standard Galerkin formulation for the diffusive residual. The physical source terms are upwinded together with the convective fluxes. Numerical results show an excellent agreement with experimental measurements and available literature.