This paper investigates a Mach 6 oblique breakdown via direct numerical simulation in conjunction with stability and quadrant analyses. Particular emphasis is placed on, first, the heat transfer and mean flow distortion in the near-wall and outer transitional boundary layer, and, second, the flow events that are responsible for the production of the Reynolds stress. The energy budget reveals that enhancement of viscous dissipation due to mean flow distortion dominates the heat transfer overshoot, while the dissipation due to fluctuations is lesser but not negligible. Downstream of the location of the peak mean heat flux, the wall temperature gradient (non-dimensionalized by the freestream temperature and local boundary layer thickness) varies little, owing to the occurrence of breakdown and the establishment of self-similarity. Renormalized by the boundary layer thickness, a new correlation of the Stanton number shows no overshoot or difference between the original overshoot region and the turbulent region, which indicates the possibility of similarity once breakdown has occurred. In the outer region, enhanced advective heat exchange strongly reshapes the mean temperature profile. Because of successive modal growth and nonlinear saturation, the contributions of the primary oblique mode, streak mode, and a superharmonic to the outer advective heat transfer are found to compete near the location of the peak heat flux. From the perspective of fluid motions, quadrant analysis highlights the evenly and broadly distributed joint probability density function (PDF) of the fluctuating velocities during transition, which results in overproduction of the Reynolds stress, while the PDF is concentrated around zero in the turbulent region. The flow event Q2 (ejection) overtakes Q4 (sweep) in the outer boundary layer of the transitional region, mainly owing to the primary mode, while the two events become attenuated and nearly achieve balance when transition is complete.

The compressible-boundary-layer stability can be considerably influenced by base flow distortion. The distortion may originate from perturbations of flow parameters, such as the Mach number. In this paper, sensitivities of the boundary layer stability to certain flow parameters are derived analytically by utilizing the homotopy analysis (with codes shared), in conjunction with a direct-adjoint stability theory. The sensitivities can be categorized according to the routes the distortion evolves. Route I is that parameters distort the base flow (Sensitivity A), which, in turn, affect the eigenvalue of the linear stability equation (Sensitivity B). Route II gives rise to the effects of flow parameters onto eigenvalues caused by direct perturbation of the linear operators (Sensitivity C). Results indicate that Sensitivity A is characterized by the only peak found on the sensitivity profile that corresponds to the maximum gradient of base flow; for Sensitivity B, production terms, e.g., the mean-shear terms, are found to be significant, while for Sensitivity C, which is rarely discussed in existing literature, the pressure gradient terms in the momentum equations are dominant in affecting the stability via route II. Furthermore, route II can be more significant than route I. Having examined the variation of the mean shear gradient, $d(\overline{\rho }d\overline{u}/dy)/dy$ , near the critical layer y_c, it is proven that the sensitivity of the eigenvalue to the velocity or temperature distortion is negative at y_c under certain assumptions, particularly for the temperature-relevant sensitivity that has hardly been discussed before.

Direct numerical simulation of shock-turbulent mixing layer interaction (STMLI) is conducted in this paper to study the influence of shock-turbulent interaction (STI) on the turbulence evolution and shock-associated noise. The results show that turbulent kinetic energy and pressure fluctuation around the interaction point of STI are both first increased and then reduced to a smaller value than that in the fully developed region of the turbulent mixing layer, while the Reynolds-stress anisotropy at the upper edge of STMLI is changed under the compression–expansion effect induced by the distorted shock tip and the reflected expansion wave. Additionally, it is found that shock-associated noise would increase the overall sound pressure level (OASPL) and amplify the high-frequency noise at the upstream observers. By applying the shock-leakage theory, the turbulence scale analysis, and the spectrum analysis, two generation mechanisms of shock-associated noise are identified: first, the influence of turbulence on the shock wave results in the shock unsteady movement, which generates a sound wave with cylindrical wave front; second, STI decreases the turbulence scale and increases the pressure fluctuation in the high-frequency band so as to strengthen the small-scale turbulence to radiate out more high-frequency noise. Finally, the shock strength effect on shock-associated noise is explored, and the shock-associated noise reduction is observed when decreasing the shock strength. By converting the OASPL difference to the equivalent acoustic pressure difference, a linear correlation between the shock-associated noise source strength and the shock strength is found.