Assessment of the Aerodisk Size on Drag Reduction and Thermal Protection of High-Bluntness Vehicles at Hypersonic Speeds
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 30, Issue 4
Abstract
In this paper, numerical simulations are performed to investigate the influence of aerodisk size on the drag reduction and thermal protection of highly blunted bodies flying at hypersonic speeds. The compressible, axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations are solved with an one-equation turbulence model for free-stream Mach number of 5.75. To ensure the validity of used numerical model, results are compared with data of analytical and experimental works and good agreement is observed. Results show that an increase in the aerodisk size initially decreases the drag coefficient and then increases the drag force. It is found that that the flat-faced spike leads to a lower drag than the spherical one at low aerodisk size, whereas the reverse is observed at high aerodisk size. The findings show that the spike length plays a crucial role in the drag coefficient. Moreover, results reveal that an increase in the aerodisk size significantly reduces heat load over the cone, while the heat load of the whole assembly increases at high aerodisk size. Numerical findings exhibit that heat load of the flat-faced spike is always lower than the spherical spike. According to the numerical results, the optimum aerodisk in terms of having lower drag and heating level is obtained.
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Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 30 • Issue 4 • July 2017
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 22, 2016
Accepted: Sep 19, 2016
Published online: Jan 31, 2017
Discussion open until: Jun 30, 2017
Published in print: Jul 1, 2017
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