Heat transfer investigation on under-expanded supersonic impinging jets

In this study, wall-resolved large-eddy simulations are performed to investigate the underpinning physics of impingement heat transfer in under-expanded supersonic impinging jets. The jet is generated with an infinite-lipped nozzle of diameter D, has a nozzle-to-wall distance of 5D, a nozzle pressure ratio (NPR) of 3.4 and a Reynolds number of 6×10⁴ based on the ideally-expanded jet velocity. Two thermal boundary conditions of a heated isothermal wall and an adiabatic wall for the impingement plate are considered. Both impinging jets in the current study feature a strong stand-off shock, which oscillates periodically in front of the impingement plate at two dominant frequencies. These oscillations result in two local peaks of the mean heat transfer coefficients with the first peak located in the stagnation region but shifted away from the stagnation point (i.e. jet axis), whilst the second peak is located in the wall jet region. The instantaneous fields of pressure, vorticity and Nusselt number are first discussed to study qualitatively the connection between these two peaks of the mean heat transfer coefficient and the near-wall flow structures. The characteristics of these two peaks are then analysed using the near-wall statistics and spectra of the pressure, axial velocity and Nusselt number distribution. It is found that the first peak of the Nusselt number forms as a consequence of the jet impingement of the non-periodic turbulent structures, whilst the second peak is linked to the reattachment of the recirculation bubble in the wall jet. It is shown that the unsteady separation and reattachment processes are strongly related to the oscillatory motion of the stand-off shock at the dominant frequencies. Last but not the least, the first local minimum close to the stagnation point is also found to be associated with the strong oscillatory behaviour of the stand-off shock.