ABSTRACT
Blunt body flows came under intensive study during the mid-1950s to mid-1960s because of the interest at that time in the United States and the Soviet Union to develop atmospheric reentry vehicles. The heating rate on a spherical body is inversely proportional to the square root of the radius of curvature, so blunt bodies with large nose radii were used to mitigate the intensive heating occurring at reentry speeds. In the mid-1960s, Rusanov [186] in the Soviet Union and Moretti [154] in the United States independently developed time asymptotic methods to obtain highquality solutions for these types of flows. The problem is now considered a classic in computational fluid dynamics and continues to draw the attention of researchers who use it as a way to bench mark new methods. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to see in the current literature solutions whose qualities are questionable.
