Numerical Investigation of Hypersonic Boundary Layers of Perfect and Dense Gases

Abstract

High-speed flows of gases with complex thermodynamic behavior (often referred to as “real gases”) have been paid growing interest from the scientific community due to the manifold applications in aerospace and power generation systems. In this work, we focus on so-called dense-gas flows found in several engineering applications, ranging from energy production to high-speed wind tunnels. Dense gases are single-phase fluids of complex molecules, at pressure and temperature conditions of the same order of their thermodynamic critical point. These fluids, in particular those belonging to the Bethe–Zel’dovich–Thompson family, may exhibit nonclassical phenomena in the transonic and supersonic regimes such as expansion shocks or mixed waves; these nonclassical effects may be characterized by means of the fundamental derivative of gas dynamics.