Extremely high wall pressure events in shock wave and turbulent boundary layer interactions using DNS data

This study investigates high-amplitude Extreme Wall Pressure fluctuation Events (EWPEs) in Shock wave/Turbulent Boundary Layer Interactions (STBLIs) through the conditional sampling of direct numerical simulation databases. The aim is to evaluate the effect of STBLIs and their strength on the statistical properties and associated turbulent structures of EWPEs using the conditional-averaging and clustering method. The temporal statistical results show that the occurrence probability and contribution ratio of EWPEs decrease downstream of strong STBLI, but their duration and interval time increase. Regarding two-dimensional wall pressure structures, the large population of small-scale structures becomes more elongated, but strong interactions induce a greater number of large-scale structures. The pairing of wall pressure events with a higher occurrence probability is verified by the joint probability density functions. Conditional analysis reveals that, as the interaction strength increases, the ejection motion associated with positive events occurs farther downstream and the spanwise vortex core locating above negative events is lifted up along the wall-normal direction. Moreover, analysis associates the paired wall pressure events with the sweep, ejection, and swirl motions in STBLIs, where hairpin eddies play an important role in the formation of positive–negative paired wall pressure structures.