Compressible Navier–Stokes simulations have been performed to study the laminar near-wake of two-dimensional adiabatic hypersonic blunt bodies. In particular, the modified free-interaction theory from previous work has been examined for cylindrical geometries with a truncated aftbody of finite shoulder radius. The geometries investigated were a single-parameter family of geometries based on the ratio between the shoulder radius and the forebody radius. A series of simulations were performed over