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

Abstract

A new innovative engineering method is developed to predict surface quantity (pressure, skin-friction, and heat transfer) distributions on three-dimensional bodies, such as blunt-nosed bodies with circular and noncircular cross sections and bluff-nosed bodies of complex configuration. A key feature of the current procedure is to base threedimensional effects on geometrical quantities associated with the three-dimensional body rather than the fluid mechanics of the flow on the three-dimensional body. The geometrical quantity is characteristic length associated with distinguishing features of the three-dimensional body. With the use of the stagnation Reynolds number with the characteristic length so defined in the analytical equations for each of the surface quantities, the surface quantities on three-dimensional bodies of simple and complex configurations are evaluated. The results from the engineering method on symmetrical and asymmetrical stagnation points, sphere‐cones, elliptic paraboloids, and an aeroassist flight experiment vehicle, consisting of an ellipsoidal nose followed by an elliptic cone and a toroidal skirt, under hypersonic, rarefied and free molecular flow conditions agreed with available theoretical and experimental data with a reasonable accuracy. Wherever possible, emphasis is placed to provide a plausible explanation of three-dimensional fluid mechanical effects on the surface quantities of the given body.