Drag Reduction and Thermal Protection of the Combination of Aero Disk, Lateral Jet, and Rear Jet for Hypersonic Vehicle

Abstract

This study proposes a combined scheme based on a spike-aero-disk, a lateral jet, and a rear jet to enhance hypersonic vehicles’ drag reduction and thermal protection performance. Numerical simulations were conducted using CFD methods to validate the scheme’s capabilities. The results demonstrate a significant improvement in drag reduction and thermal protection compared to the basic scheme with only a spike-aero disk. Furthermore, under the same mass flow rate conditions, the combined scheme with an extra rear jet is compared to a scheme with a spike-aero-disk-lateral jet, revealing a reduction of approximately 23.4% in the peak Stanton number, indicating a remarkable enhancement in drag reduction and thermal protection performance. The simulation results show that the use of lateral jet and rear jet improves the overall thermal protection ability and drag reduction ability of the vehicle.