2024/01/31 by Marcus DuPont, DuPont, Marcus, Andrei Gruzinov +3
Engineering · #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Particle Dynamics in Fluid Flows
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2401.18080
We show that strong bow shocks are turbulent and non-universal near the head, but asymptote to a universal steady, self-similar, and analytically solvable flow in the downstream. The turbulence is essentially 3D, and has been confirmed by a 3D simulation. The asymptotic behavior is confirmed with high resolution 2D and 3D simulations of a cold uniform wind encountering both a solid spherical obstacle and stellar wind. This solution is relevant in the context of: (i) probing the kinematic properties of observed high-velocity compact bodies -- e.g., runaway stars and/or supernova ejecta blobs -- flying through the interstellar medium; and (ii) constraining stellar bow shock luminosities invoked by some quasi-periodic eruption (QPE) models.