Leading Edge Aerothermal Inverse Design of Hyersonic Vehicle Based on Homotopy Optimization Method

Abstract

Blunt leading edge with profiles of circular or power law shape is often used to decrease the aerodynamic heating of a vehicle when it flights into hypersonic regime. In order to further reduce the peak of heat flux of the leading edge, an inverse shape design method is presented in this paper. The leading edge is parameterized by using B-spline curve method. The hypersonic flow field and the heat flux distribution around the leading edge is evaluated by computational fluid dynamics. A homotopy method is developed as the optimizer. The computational heat flux distribution is driven by the optimizer to meet the objective . In order to verify the validity of the method, the inverse aerothermal design of a 2D leading edge with the thickness of 5 mm was carried out in the design condition Mach number is 6.5. The initial profile of the leading edge approximates to a circular arc. An H-type structured grid was used to discrete the computational domain. A 2D thin-layer Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations in strong conservation law form was employed as the solver. The results have shown that the peak value of the heat flux decreases about 4.6%.