Aerothermodynamic design and performance analysis of modified nose cones for space reentry vehicles

Abstract

ABSTRACT Reentry vehicles are blunt-nosed bodies designed primarily to protect them from high heating loads experienced while returning from space. The main intention of this present work is to alleviate the aerodynamic heating of the reentry vehicles by suggesting new geometrical considerations. This proposal implements the surface augmentation of the various conventional nose cones by creating some spherical protrusions over the nose region. This project presents the role of spherical protrusions over the nose part in order to reduce the aerodynamic heating of space reentry vehicles. A comparative numerical study has been made on the existing and proposed reentry bodies to find the degree of reduction in aerodynamic heating. From the numerical simulations, it has been observed that there is a significant alleviation of aerodynamic heating in the proposed nose cone model than in the conventional blunt body. From this simulation analysis, a reduction in aerodynamic heating of about 11% and 35% was observed in the chosen modified spherical and parabolic winged reentry models during hypersonic conditions. This numerical investigation perspicuously explains the importance of placing spherical protrusions over the conventional blunt-nosed reentry vehicles in order to alleviate the maximum degree of aerodynamic heating.