Engineering Calculation Method of Aerodynamic Coefficients for Air-breathing Hypersonic Vehicle

Abstract

In this paper a set of engineering calculation methods based on inviscid flow theory for calculating the aerodynamic forces and moments of a representative air-breathing hypersonic vehicle is presented. The viscosity effect is considered to obtain the drag force more accurately by applying temperature reference method. Unlike conventional aircraft, the experimental data of air-breathing hypersonic vehicles (AHVs) are rare to acquire and the common ways to analyze the aerodynamic characteristics of a new designed AHV are using CFD methods. In this way lots of calculation needs to be done at different points of heights and Mach numbers which will take a relatively long time. Therefore the focus of this paper is on developing a method to calculate aerodynamic forces and moments accurately enough and more rapidly than CFD methods. Simulations results demonstrate that the method has a good performance in calculating the aerodynamic coefficients when applied in the phases of the designing and analyzing the characteristics of AHVs.