Development and assessment of an improved Baldwin-Lomax turbulence model for complex hypersonic flows in two and three dimensions

Abstract

Accurate prediction of hypersonic turbulent boundary layers is critical for the design of hypersonic vehicles. Traditional turbulence models were originally developed for incompressible flows and are commonly extended to compressible conditions by employing density-weighted averages. In a recent study, Chen et al. (J. Fluid Mech., 2024, vol 987, A7) proposed an improved Baldwin-Lomax (BL) turbulence model by incorporating velocity transformations and the temperature-velocity relation. Their modifications yielded notable improvements for high-speed zero-pressure-gradient flat-plate flows. Building upon this foundation, the present study introduces further enhancements to Chen et al.’s BL model to improve its accuracy and robustness for complex hypersonic configurations. The improved BL turbulence model is implemented into a standard computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver and validated against direct numerical simulation results and experimental data across two- and three-dimensional hypersonic cases involving pressure gradients, cold walls, and shock/boundary-layer interactions. The results show that the improved BL turbulence model generally achieves superior accuracy in attached flow regions compared to the baseline BL, Spalart-Allmaras and k–ω SST turbulence models. These findings highlight the model’s potential for practical use in hypersonic flow simulations, offering a valuable tool for aerospace engineering applications.