Double-cone experiment and numerical analysis at AEDC hypervelocity wind tunnel No. 9

Over the past several years, that part of the AIAA community that looks specifically at validating computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in the hypersonic flight regime has put forth a significant effort primarily focused on configurations that produce complex flow structures that are very difficult to model computationally. One such example is the 25/55-deg double-cone configuration that was originally tested at the Calspan-University at Buffalo Research Center (CUBRC). More recently, this same double-cone configuration was tested at the Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel No. 9 (Tunnel 9). During the AEDC Tunnel 9 test, surface heat-transfer and pressure data covering a broad range of freestream Reynolds numbers were collected on the configuration. In addition to the surface measurements, high-speed Schlieren flow-field images were collected. The surface data and flow-field video have highlighted a highly unsteady flow field that was not found during the original validation effort. This paper describes the data and numerical analysis efforts using the latest data set collected in Tunnel 9.