When
Thursday, September 18, 2025, at 4:00 p.m.
Adam Skora
PhD Candidate
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
University of Arizona
"An Experimental Investigation of Bluntness Effects on Transition on a 7 Degree Cone at Mach 5"
AME Lecture Hall, Room S202 | Zoom link
Abstract: The effects of bluntness on transition on a 7~degree half angle cone were investigated at Mach 4.8. For sharp and low-bluntness cases, surface pressure measurements and schlieren visualizations indicate that the first mode dominates the transition process. For higher bluntness cases, a second instability, believed to be an entropy layer instability, was found to coexist near transition with the first mode instability. Schlieren for the low bluntness case show evidence that a similar entropy layer instability existed at a significantly lower energy level near transition. Nonlinear analysis of the pressure measurements provides further evidence of the existence of an entropy layer instability, which appears to nonlinearly grow and subsequently decay far upstream of the main transition front for most cases.
Bio: Adam Skora is a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona studying hypersonic boundary layer instabilities. During his time at the University of Arizona, he has used pressure measurements and schlieren diagnostics in an attempt to study bluntness effects on boundary layer stability in conical flows. His thesis primarily focuses on studying the growth and decay of entropy layer instabilities in the low bluntness regime of conical flows. He received his BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona in 2021. While working on his thesis, he has led multiple applied research projects at the University of Arizona and interned at CUBRC.