Numerical Study on Aerodynamic Design of Hypersonic Vehicle Forebody

Abstract

The lift forebody configuration of a small hypersonic vehicle is designed by using the wedge angle method in this paper. The lift forebody created has been optimized by the simplex method with a penalty function. The aerodynamic characteristics of the forebody optimized are investigated by numerical method. The research results show that the wedge angle method is a high efficient way to generate the lift forebody of the hypersonic vehicle; On the design mach number, there is pressure leaking between the upper and lower surface of lift forebody, which leads to lateral flow in the spanwise on the precompression plane, and which create the unhomogeneity of inlet flow field; Adding side skirts on the both sides, which can reduce the lateral flow on the forebody's precompression plane, it can raise the forebody lift.