Aerodynamic Investigation of Hypersonic Vehicle with Forward-Facing Cavity

Abstract

Forward-facing cavity mounted on the blunt nose of hypersonic vehicle is a good choice to reduce the stagnation heating. Presently, the study on hypersonic vehicles nose tip with forward-facing cavity mainly focus on its thermology characteristic, and little work can be found investigating the effect of cavity on aerodynamic force for a holistic vehicle. The CFD method is developed to investigate the effect of cavity geometry on aerodynamic performance of hypersonic vehicle with a forward-facing cavity on the nose-tip. Drag coefficient, lift coefficient and pitching moment coefficient of the vehicle for different attack angle are calculated. It is found that the cavity length to diameter (L/D) can not be a characteristic parameter in aerodynamic research, though it was used as a main characteristic parameter in investigation on the thermal protection. The length of the cavity L has little effect on aerodynamic characteristic of the vehicle, and the cavity diameter D has a crucial influence on the aerodynamic performance and the aerodynamic performance decrease with the D increasing. With the attack angle increasing, the drag coefficient, lift coefficient, pitching moment coefficient and lift-drag ratio of the hypersonic vehicle all increase.