Coupled investigation on drag and heat flux reduction over spiked waverider with a wide-speed range

Abstract

When flying at supersonic/hypersonic speeds, the vehicles constantly suffer from extremely complex aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic environment. In order to investigate the drag reduction and thermal protection characteristics of hypersonic vehicles, the spike, as well as the combined spike and opposing jet strategy, are applied to the waverider. The effects of different strategies and angle of attack on the flow field structure and the aerodynamic characteristics of a waverider are studied, and the fluid-thermal interaction between the three-dimensional flow field and the internal structure is explored. The angle of attack has significant influences on the lift and drag coefficient values, and increasing the angle of attack can further increase the lift and drag coefficient values, but result in the decrease of the lift-to-drag ratio. The coupled analysis results indicate that a prominent reduction in the drag and aeroheating is achieved when the combined spike and opposing jet strategy is added to the waverider, and the flow field structure changes remarkably during the coupling process.