Body shape with minimum total radiant energy flux toward its surface

Abstract

During a space vehicle's entry into a planet's atmosphere at hypersonic speed one of the important problems is the aerodynamical surface heating due to convective and radiant heat fluxes from the gas after passing through a strong shock wave. Due to the high destructive action of this heating, an important problem is the selection of the aerodynamic shape allowing the minimum heat influx to its surface. The problem of determining the shapes of an axisymmetric body from the condition of minimum total convective heat flux along the lateral face of the body was considered under various assumptions in [1–7]. There are a number of entry conditions (for example, into the earth's atmosphere with a speed of 11 km/ sec at an altitude of about 60 km [12]) during which the radiative component becomes dominant in the total heat flux toward the body. A numerical solution of the problem of hypersonic flow of a nonviscous, non-heat-conducting radiating gas around a body is obtained at this time only for a limited class of bodies and primarily for certain entry conditions (for example, [8–12]). On the basis of these calculations it is impossible to make general conclusions concerning arbitrary body shapes. Therefore, approximate methods were proposed which permit the distribution of radiant heat flux to be obtained for an arbitrary axisymmetric body in a wide range of flight conditions [13–15]. In the present work an expression is derived for the total radiant heat flux over the entire body surface and similarity criteria are found. A variational problem is formulated to determine the shape of an axisymmetric body from the condition of minimum total radiant-heat flux over the entire body surface. It is solved analytically for the class of thin bodies and in the case of a strongly radiating gas.