Evaluation of Various Flow Control Methods in Reducing Drag and Aerodynamic Heating on the Nose of Hypersonic Flying Objects

Effective deduction of air heating load and drag is a critical issue in hypersonic vehicle engineering applications. In this research, seven various geometrical models have been proposed to study and compare the effect of each configuration on the flow field, drag, and aerodynamic heating deduction under the same flow conditions. The presented configurations in this study: (a) blunt-body geometry as a reference of comparison, (b) blunt-body geometry with a spike, (c) blunt-body geometry with an counter flow jet, (d) blunt-body geometry with a spike and counter flow jet, (e) blunt-body geometry with a spike and aerodisk, (f) blunt-body geometry with a spike, aerodisk, and root counter flow jet, (g) blunt-body geometry with a spike, four aerodisks and root counter flow jet. The Reynolds-Averaged equations have been solved using the Finite Volume Method (FVM) along with the shear stress turbulence model (k-ω SST). The flow is assumed compressible, steady-state, and axisymmetric with a free stream Mach number of 6. According to the study of each configuration’s performance related to the parameters of drag, maximum pressure, and maximum heat flux factors on the blunt-body walls, (g) configuration with a drag factor of 0.2699, maximum pressure factor of 209.8, and maximum heat flux factor of 25.1, has the most deduction on the blunt-body walls among the seven configurations. The deduction percentage of drag, maximum pressure, and maximum heat flux factors of (g) configuration to (a) configuration are %72.1, %94.5, and %79.9, respectively, which significantly diminished drag and heat flux. Also, the best configuration scenarios for drag and aerodynamic heating deduction are geometrical models of g, f, d, e, c, b, and a, respectively.