Determination of the optimum nose cone geometrical shape for supersonic missile

Abstract

The selection of the nose shape is considered to be one of the most crucial aspects in designing the missile as the nose cones are designed to travel at different speeds and altitude. The main challenge is that the nose shape being the foremost part of the missile, experiences high aerodynamic loads which must be resisted by the compressible motion of the fluid for optimum performance at supersonic speeds. The research aims to compare the Conical and Ogival nose cone shapes of the supersonic missile at Mach 2.0. The work includes flow characterization of these nose shapes in Ansys Fluent and for the flow being near the wall, K-omega (2 Eq.) Standard model is chosen. The aerodynamic properties such as the downstream Mach number, wave angle, pressure ratio, density ratio, temperature ratio and the aerodynamic coefficients were estimated computationally and were simultaneously compared theoretically with the oblique shock theory. The results obtained were validated within a variation of 10 percent. The conclusions were drawn and the ogival nose shape has the minimum aerodynamic resistance.