Investigation of ELAC 1 Aerodynamics Using CFD in Supersonic Flow

Abstract

The ELAC 1 (ELliptical Aerodynamic Configuration 1) is basically Hypersonic space vehicle and first stage of TSTO (Two Stage To Orbit) destined to fly up to altitude of 35 Km with M∞=7 (Free stream Mach No.). In this paper, the comparison between the experimental data available at RWTH, Aachen and Polyhedral Unstructured Navier-Stokes solver simulations are made. The different AOA (Angles of attack) 0̊, 6̊ and 10̊ are considered with Re = 3.6×106 for the supersonic flow simulations. The various coefficients such as Aerodynamic coefficients, Pressure coefficients are compared with the wind tunnel data and the physics of the flow field is investigated.