Numerical and experimental studies have demonstrated laminar–turbulent transition in hypersonic boundary layers over sharp cones via the modal growth of planar Mack-mode instabilities. However, due to the strong reduction in Mack-mode growth at higher nose bluntness values, the mechanisms underlying the observed onset of transition over the cone frustum are currently unknown. Linear non-modal growth analysis has shown that both planar and oblique travelling disturbances that peak within the entropy layer experience appreciable energy amplification for moderate to large nose bluntness. However, due to their weak signature within the boundary-layer region, the route to transition onset via non-modal growth of travelling disturbances remains unclear. Nonlinear parabolized stability equations (NPSE) and direct numerical simulations (DNS) are used to identify a potential mechanism for transition over a 7-degree blunt cone that was tested in the AFRL Mach-6 high-Reynolds-number facility. Specifically, computations are conducted to study the nonlinear development of a pair of oblique, unsteady non-modal disturbances in the regime of moderately blunt nose tips. Excellent agreement was demonstrated between the NPSE and DNS predictions. Results reveal that, even though the linear non-modal disturbances are primarily concentrated outside the boundary layer, their nonlinear interaction can generate stationary streaks that penetrate and amplify within the boundary layer, eventually inducing the onset of transition via the breakdown of these streaks. The results indicate that a pair of oblique, controlled non-modal disturbances can produce transition at the location measured in the experiment when their initial amplitude is chosen to be approximately 0.15 % of the free-stream velocity.

The interaction of stationary streaks undergoing non-modal growth with modally unstable instability waves in a supersonic flat-plate boundary-layer flow is studied using numerical computations. For incompressible flows, previous studies have shown that boundary-layer modulation due to streaks below a threshold amplitude level can stabilize the Tollmien–Schlichting instability waves, resulting in a delay in the onset of laminar–turbulent transition. In the supersonic regime, the most-amplified linear waves become three-dimensional, corresponding to oblique, first-mode waves. This change in the character of dominant instabilities leads to an important change in the transition process, which is now dominated by oblique breakdown via nonlinear interactions between pairs of first-mode waves that propagate at equal but opposite angles with respect to the free stream. Because the oblique breakdown process is characterized by a strong amplification of stationary streamwise streaks, artificial excitation of such streaks may be expected to promote transition in a supersonic boundary layer. Indeed, suppression of those streaks has been shown to delay the onset of transition in prior literature. This paper investigates the nonlinear evolution of initially linear optimal disturbances that evolve into finite-amplitude streaks in a two-dimensional, Mach 3 adiabatic flat-plate boundary-layer flow, followed by the modal instability characteristics of the perturbed, streaky boundary-layer flow. Both parts of the investigation are performed with the plane-marching parabolized stability equations. Consistent with previous findings, the present study shows that optimally growing stationary streaks can destabilize the first-mode waves, but only when the spanwise wavelength of the instability waves is equal to or smaller than twice the streak spacing. Transition in a benign disturbance environment typically involves first-mode waves with significantly longer spanwise wavelengths, and hence, these waves are stabilized by the optimal growth streaks. Thus, as long as the amplification factors for the destabilized, short wavelength instability waves remain below the threshold level for transition, a significant net stabilization is achieved, yielding a potential transition delay that may be comparable to the length of the laminar region in the uncontrolled case.

Experiments are performed to investigate the effect of nose-tip bluntness on the instability mechanisms leading to boundary-layer transition on a $7^{\circ }$ half-angle cone in a Mach-6 free stream. The development of disturbances is characterized using a combination of high-speed calibrated schlieren images and pressure measurements, and the data are compared with results computed using the parabolized stability equations. The approximately 414 mm long cone model is equipped with an interchangeable nose tip ranging from sharp to 5.08 mm in radius. For nose tips with a radius $R_{N}<2.54\ {\rm mm}$ , second-mode instability waves are the dominant mechanism leading to transition. Time-averaged frequency spectra computed from the calibrated schlieren visualizations and pressure measurements are used to compute the second-mode most-amplified frequencies and integrated amplification rates ( $N$ factors). Good agreement is observed between the measurements and computations in the linear-growth regime for the sharp-nose configuration at each free-stream condition. Additionally, a bispectral analysis identifies quadratic phase locking of frequency content responsible for the growth of higher harmonics. For nose tips of $R_{N}\geqslant 2.54\ {\rm mm}$ , the schlieren visualization region is upstream of the entropy-layer swallowing length, and second-mode waves are no longer visible within the boundary layer; instead, elongated, steeply inclined features believed to be associated with non-modal instability mechanisms develop between the entropy-layer and boundary-layer edges. Simultaneously acquired surface pressure measurements reveal high-frequency pressure oscillations similar to second-mode instability waves associated with the trailing edge of these non-modal features.

The interaction of stationary streaks undergoing non-modal growth with modally unstable instability waves in a high Mach number boundary-layer flow is studied using numerical computations. The geometry and flow conditions are selected to match a relevant trajectory location from the ascent phase of the HIFiRE-1 flight experiment; namely, a $7^{\circ }$ half-angle, circular cone with $2.5$ mm nose radius, free-stream Mach number equal to $5.30$ , unit Reynolds number equal to $13.42~\text{m}^{-1}$ and wall-to-adiabatic temperature ratio of approximately $0.35$ over most of the vehicle. This paper investigates the nonlinear evolution of initially linear optimal disturbances that evolve into finite-amplitude streaks, followed by an analysis of the modal instability characteristics of the perturbed, streaky boundary-layer flow. The investigation is performed with a stationary, full Navier–Stokes equations solver and the plane-marching parabolized stability equations (PSE), in conjunction with partial-differential-equation-based planar eigenvalue analysis. The overall effect of streaks is to reduce the peak amplification factors of instability waves, indicating a possible downstream shift in the onset of laminar–turbulent transition. The present study confirms previous findings that the mean-flow distortion of the nonlinear streak perturbation reduces the amplification rates of the Mack-mode instability. More importantly, however, the present results demonstrate that the spanwise varying component of the streak can produce a larger effect on the Mack-mode amplification. The analysis of planar and oblique Mack-mode waves modulated by the presence of the streaks shows that the planar Mack mode still dominates the instability characteristics of the flow. The study with selected azimuthal wavenumbers for the stationary streaks reveals that a wavenumber of approximately $1.4$ times larger than the optimal wavenumber is more effective in stabilizing the planar Mack-mode instabilities. In the absence of unstable first-mode waves for the present cold-wall condition, transition onset is expected to be delayed until the peak streak amplitude increases to nearly 35 % of the free-stream velocity, when intrinsic instabilities of the boundary-layer streaks begin to dominate the transition process. For streak amplitudes below that limit a significant net stabilization is achieved, yielding a potential transition delay that can exceed 100 % of the length of the laminar region in the uncontrolled case.

Transition prediction is an important aspect of aerodynamic design because of its impact on skin friction and potential coupling with flow separation characteristics. Traditionally, the modeling of transition has relied on correlation-based empirical formulas based on integral quantities such as the shape factor of the boundary layer. However, in many applications of computational fluid dynamics, the shape factor is not straightforwardly available or not well-defined. We propose using the complete velocity profile along with other quantities (e.g., frequency, Reynolds number) to predict the perturbation amplification factor. While this can be achieved with regression models based on a classical fully connected neural network, such a model can be computationally more demanding. We propose a convolutional neural network inspired by the underlying physics as described by the stability equations. Specifically, convolutional layers are first used to extract integral quantities from the velocity profiles, and then fully connected layers are used to map the extracted integral quantities, along with frequency and Reynolds number, to the output (amplification ratio). Numerical tests on classical boundary layers clearly demonstrate the merits of the proposed method. More importantly, we demonstrate that, for Tollmien-Schlichting instabilities in two-dimensional, low-speed boundary layers, the proposed network encodes information in the boundary-layer profiles into an integral quantity that is strongly correlated to a well-known, physically defined parameter—the shape factor.

Roughness-induced transient growth has emerged as a possible cause for transition in linearly stable boundary layer flows over spherical forebodies. This paper investigates the optimal growth of perturbations in the axisymmetric, laminar boundary layer over a hemisphere placed in a Mach 7.32 free stream, with the goals of contributing further insights and revisiting highly successful, transient-growth based prediction criteria for subcritical transition over blunt body configurations. Earlier predictions based on local-similarity approximation to the basic state are extended to a basic state that is obtained from the compressible Navier-Stokes equations and, hence, accounts for the presence of the bow shock, the nonsimilar development of the boundary layer, and the convex curvature of the body surface. The predicted transient growth characteristics are profoundly different from the previous body of results for boundary layer flows over flat plates and circular cones. More importantly, the selections of energy norm and objective function used to compute optimal growth exert a crucial influence on the optimal growth characteristics of a blunt body. With the conventional energy norm based on both kinetic and thermodynamic fluctuations, the highest energy gain from the input station to the output station occurs over relatively short optimization intervals in the vicinity of the stagnation point; however, the associated kinetic energy gain, which is more closely linked to transition via streak instabilities, is rather small in magnitude. On the other hand, the mean kinetic energy gain is maximized when the disturbance inflow location nearly coincides with the location corresponding to peak wall shear associated with the basic state. Assuming that the roughness-induced disturbance velocities are proportional to the roughness height, the maximum disturbance kinetic energy would be reached in the vicinity of the sonic point, which could explain the measured onset of transition within this region during prior wind-tunnel and flight experiments.