Aerothermal and aerodynamic characteristics of reusable hypersonic vehicles with heat transfer minimised sweepback

Abstract

Abstract Establishing aerothermal criteria for swept leading-edge hypersonic vehicle design is the predominant purpose of this work. This study is focused on two different configurations of vehicles based on the swept-back angle ( $\varLambda$ ) viz. minimum drag ( $\varLambda$ Drag-min ), and minimum heat transfer to vehicle ( $\varLambda$ HT-min ). Maximum wall temperatures obtained from the simulation performed in ANSYS 2020 with the k-epsilon turbulence model are 1,013 and 970K for $\varLambda$ Drag-min and $\varLambda$ HT-min , respectively. These temperatures are used to obtain the corresponding thicknesses of thermal protection systems to maintain inner wall temperature at 323K. Further study is divided into two cases depending on the direction of thickness of thermal protection system with respect to vehicle body. For constant payload capacity, the direction of thickness is outside; whereas for constant overall volume case, direction of thickness is inside. For constant payload volume case, the percentage weight reduction of thermal protection system is 4.8%. For constant overall volume case, the percentage payload capacity increases with design at $\varLambda$ HT-min by 4.04% in addition to thermal protection system weight reduction. The lift-induced drag on vehicles with design at $\varLambda$ HT-min is significantly reduced for both cases, by 47.68% (for constant payload volume) and 45.27% (for constant overall volume).