Effects of nose bluntness, angle of attack, and oscillation amplitude on hypersonic unsteady aerodynamics of slender cones

Abstract

A previously developed analytic theory for the unsteady aerodynamics of moderately blunt slender cones has been extended to include the effects of large nose bluntness, nonzero angles of attack, and finite oscillation amplitudes. It is shown that the developed theory agrees well with available experimental data and correctly predicts the opposite effects of nose bluntness on static and dynamic stability including the highly nonlinear characteristics at angles of attack and oscillation amplitudes up to cone half-angle magnitudes. A universal scaling law has been derived that gives the nose-bluntness effects on static and dynamic characteristics for the above angle-of-attack and amplitude ranges with sufficient accuracy for preliminary design of conical re-entry vehicles flying ballistic or lifting re-entry trajectories.