Supersonic wedge shock analysis in SU2
High-fidelity CFD simulations of supersonic inviscid flow over a 2D wedge, modelling oblique shock wave formation and propagation in a structured computational domain by solving the Euler equations.
Method
The study was conducted using SU2 for the flow solution and ParaView for post-processing, enabling visualization and analysis of pressure and Mach number fields across the domain.
The core of the work was a systematic comparison of numerical treatment. Two axes were investigated: the spatial discretization order (1st vs 2nd order accuracy), and the flux method, comparing HLLC, JST, Lax-Friedrichs, CUSP and Roe schemes against each other.
/assets/img/projects/su2-mach-contour.pngResults
The comparison showed clear differences in shock sharpness and numerical dissipation. Higher-order schemes improved shock definition, while lower-order methods introduced increased diffusion that visibly thickened the discontinuity — a direct demonstration of how much the numerics, rather than the physics, determine what a simulation appears to show.
Quantitative flow behaviour was extracted through Mach number profiles along specified lines, identifying shock location and strength variations across the configurations.