Shock/expansion fan interaction with real gas effects for Earth and Mars atmospheric conditions

Numerical simulations are performed to investigate the real gas effects on shock/expansion fan interaction. Initial perfect gas simulations at low enthalpy capture the flow structures efficiently and outcomes are found to have excellent agreement with the analytical calculations. Furthermore, the simulations with the real gas solver for different enthalpies showed that the variation in enthalpy significantly changes the flow structures. It is observed that an increase in enthalpy leads to a decrease and increase in the postshock and postexpansion fan Mach numbers, respectively. Another important observation is the decrement in the peak pressure ratio with an increment in the enthalpy. These effects are noted to be more pronounced for Mars's environment due to the higher dependency of specific heat on temperature.