Hypersonic Pressure, Skin-Friction, and Heat Transfer Distributions On Space Vehicles: Planar Bodies

Abstract

An innovative approach is adopted to develop a new engineering method that predicts pressure, skin-friction, and heat transfer distributions on vehicles of arbitrary shape, flying from the hypersonic continuum, through the transitional and free molecular flow regimes. Salient features of the method are that a single algebraic expression for each of the surface quantities (pressure, skin-friction, and heat transfer coefficients) gives values of the surface quantities on sharp- as well as blunt-nosed vehicles. Only the prescribed flight conditions and surface geometry are needed to obtain results on two-dimensional planar or three-dimensional bodies. Included in the current method are rarefaction effects in the transitional regime, viscous‐inviscid interaction effects in the hypersonic continuum regime, equilibrium high-temperature gas effects, and three-dimensional effects arising due to noncircular cross sections of asymmetric shape vehicles. The method is validated against the available data from computational fluid dynamics, direct simulation Monte Carlo method, and wind-tunnel and flight data. This engineering method is reasonably accurate, easy to operate, and fast to execute. A brief review of the available engineering codes is made. An attempt is made to explain the underlying ideas in deriving the algebraic expressions for each of the surface quantities and apply them to planar flows. Extension to three-dimensional bodies is made.