Numerical simulation of flow fields induced by a supersonic projectile moving in tubes

Numerical study of the shocked flows generated by a supersonic projectile released from a launch tube into a big chamber has been performed in this paper. Based on fixed Cartesian grids, the two-dimensional axisymmetric Euler equations are solved by the fifth-order WENO scheme implemented with moving boundary conditions. Both the level set technique and ghost fluid method are used for capturing the moving interface of the projectile implicitly. The numerical results show that complex shock phenomena exist in the transient shock flow, resulting from shock-wave reflection, shock-wave focusing, shock-wave/projectile interaction and shock-wave/contact surface interactions. The relationships between the acceleration of the projectile and the transient shock flow are also discussed in detail.