A Closely Coupled Experimental and Numerical Approach for Hypersonic and High Enthalpy Flow Investigations Utilising the HEG Shock Tunnel and the DLR TAU Code

The High Enthalpy Shock Tunnel Göttingen (HEG) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is one of the major European hypersonic test facilities. It was commissioned for use in 1991 and was utilised since then extensively in a large number of national and international space and hypersonic flight projects. Originally, the facility was designed for the investigation of the influence of high temperature effects such as chemical and thermal relaxation on the aerothermodynamics of entry or re-entry space vehicles. Over the last years its range of operating conditions was subsequently extended. In this framework the main emphasis was to generate test section conditions which allow investigating the flow past hypersonic flight configuration from low altitude Mach 6 up to Mach 10 in approximately 33 km altitude. The studies performed focused on the external as well as internal aerodynamics including combustion of hydrogen in complete supersonic combustion ramjet configurations. The complexity of these flows requires that experiments in ground based facilities are strongly linked with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) investigations. These common activities range from the calibration process of the facility and the study of basic aerodynamic configurations, which are well suited to look at fundamental aspects of high enthalpy flow fields, to the investigation of complex re-entry configurations. In the DLR Spacecraft Department the