15 - Guest lectures

PHYSICAL AND NUMERICAL MODELING OF SUPERSONIC COMBUSTION FOR HYPERSONIC FLIGHT

C. Fureby, Lund University, Sweden

Supersonic combustion involves a complex interplay of shock waves, turbulent mixing, chemical kinetics, and heat release, making it one of the most challenging regimes in reacting flow research. A detailed understanding of these coupled processes is essential for the development of high-speed propulsion systems, including ramjets, scramjets, dual mode ramjets, and rotating detonation engines. Historically, progress in this field has relied heavily on specialized experimental facilities equipped with intrusive and non-intrusive diagnostics capable of capturing the extreme conditions associated with compressible reacting flows. While these experiments remain indispensable, they are expensive, technically demanding, and often limited in spatial and temporal resolution, restricting the ability to fully resolve the underlying physics. Advances in computational power and numerical modeling have significantly expanded the tools available for studying supersonic combustion. Alongside traditional Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approaches and the more computationally intensive Large Eddy Simulation (LES) has emerged as a particularly powerful method. LES resolves the dominant turbulent structures that govern mixing and flame stabilization while modeling the smaller scales, offering a favorable balance between fidelity and computational cost. This makes it well suited for capturing unsteady flow phenomena, shock-flame interactions, and turbulence-chemistry coupling that define supersonic combustion. This work reviews the physical and numerical modeling strategies used to analyze supersonic reacting flows, with emphasis on the LES methodology and its application to high-speed propulsion systems. Representative results are presented to illustrate how LES complements experimental measurements, enhances physical understanding, and supports the design and optimization of next-generation propulsion systems for hypersonic flight.

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