Grid-converged solution and analysis of the unsteady viscous flow in a two-dimensional shock tube

The flow in a shock tube is extremely complex with dynamic multi-scale structures of sharp fronts, flow separation, and vortices due to the interaction of the shock wave, the contact surface, and the boundary layer over the side wall of the tube. Prediction and understanding of the complex fluid dynamics are of theoretical and practical importance. It is also an extremely challenging problem for numerical simulation, especially at relatively high Reynolds numbers. Daru and Tenaud [Evaluation of TVD high resolution schemes for unsteady viscous shocked flows, Comput. Fluids 30, 89-113 (2001)] proposed a two-dimensional model problem as a numerical test case for high-resolution schemes to simulate the flow field in a square closed shock tube. Though many researchers attempted this problem using a variety of computational methods, there is not yet an agreed-upon grid-converged solution of the problem at the Reynolds number of 1000. This paper presents a rigorous grid-convergence study and the resulting grid-converged solutions for this problem by using a newly developed, efficient, and high-order gas-kinetic scheme. Critical data extracted from the converged solutions are documented as benchmark data. The complex fluid dynamics of the flow at Re = 1000 are discussed and analyzed in detail. Major phenomena revealed by the numerical computations include the downward concentration of the fluid through the curved shock, the formation of the vortices, the mechanism of the shock wave bifurcation, the structure of the jet along the bottom wall, and the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability near the contact surface. Presentation and analysis of those flow processes provide important physical insight into the complex flow physics occurring in a shock tube. Published by AIP Publishing.