LAUSR

Abstract Impulsively starting flow, by a sudden attainment of a large angle of attack, has been well studied for incompressible and supersonic flows, but less studied for subsonic flow. Recently, a preliminary numerical study for subsonic starting flow at a high angle of attack displays an advance of stall around a Mach number of 0.5, when compared to other Mach numbers. To see what happens in this special case, we conduct here in this paper a further study for this case, to display and analyze the full flow structures. We find that for a Mach number around 0.5, a local supersonic flow region repeatedly splits and merges, and a pair of left-going and right-going unsteady shock waves are embedded inside the leading edge vortex once it is sufficiently grown up and detached from the leading edge. The flow evolution during the formation of shock waves is displayed in detail. The reason for the formation of these shock waves is explained here using the Laval nozzle flow theory. The existence of this shock pair inside the vortex, for a Mach number only close to 0.5, may help the growing of the trailing edge vortex responsible for the advance of stall observed previously.