An expression for the dynamic stability of blunt slender elliptic bodies in hypersonic flow

Abstract

AbstractDynamic stability data on axially symmetric pointed and blunt cones, parabolic profiles and other ogive and blunt cylindrical shapes is readily available in literature; the dynamic stability on elliptic blunt paraboloids has not been studied at any great lengths in the past. Both numerical and experimental results are scarce. The present paper uses the shock expansion method to obtain the unsteady pressure distribution on blunt elliptic conical bodies at small angles-of-attack. The resulting unsteady pressure distribution is suitably integrated over the surface of the elliptic body to obtain appropriate analytic expressions for static and dynamic stability. Owing to scarcity of meaningful numerical or measured data for elliptic bodies, the results are compared in qualitative terms against published dynamic stability data on pointed elliptical cones or other axisymmetric blunt cones.