Turbulization of the wake behind a single roughness element on a blunted body at a hypersonic Mach number

The influence of a cylinder-shaped single roughness element on the laminar–turbulent transition in the presence of an entropy layer is experimentally studied. The experiments are performed on a blunted cone model at the Mach number M = 5. The roughness element is located on the blunted tip of the model. Information about the mean and fluctuating parameters of the boundary layer in the wake behind the roughness element is obtained by using hot-wire anemometry. It is shown that flow turbulization behind the roughness elements occurs at the local Reynolds number calculated on the basis of the roughness element height and equal to 400–500. It is found that the presence of the roughness element exerts a significant effect on the unsteady characteristics of the boundary layer if the roughness element height is smaller than the effective value.