Effects of compressibility and Knudsen number on the aero optics in hypersonic flow fields

Tsien summarized the similarity in hypersonic flows, and related Knudsen number to Mach number and Reynolds number. Recently, a path-based problem, aero-optical effect, arises in hypersonic flows, and it concerns about the compressibility and the Knudsen number of the gas flows, which differs from the Tsien’s focus to some extent. In this paper, the similarity of hypersonic aero optics is theoretically studied, and both flow fields and induced aero-optical effect after flows pass through a cylinder are predicted by a well-accepted particle-based method, direct simulation Monte-Carlo (DSMC) method. The results show that the optical distortions are inversely proportional to the Knudsen number, while the compressibility plays an important role in the optical degradations. Hence, it is confirmed that the effects of Mach number and Knudsen number on the aero-optical effect induced by hypersonic flows are of great significance. Besides, since the Knudsen number is defined straightforwardly based on the optically active region, the physics is clearer than any other similarity criteria.