Stream-Surface Iteration-Based Flowfield Calculation Method for Pressure-Controllable Waverider Design

Abstract

The performance of waveriders is greatly influenced by the wall pressure distribution. To achieve the goal of designing a waverider based on the complex two-dimensional pressure distribution, this study proposes a methodology called the stream-surface iteration-based flowfield calculation (SIFC) method. This method discretizes the three-dimensional flowfield with curved stream surfaces and approximates the flow around each point with a unique axisymmetric flow. Moreover, this method iteratively solves the shape of each stream surface and the corresponding flowfield to deal with ill-posed problems. To verify its effectiveness, the SIFC method was first applied to inversely solve the two external annular supersonic flowfields. Then, it was used for the waverider design. The computational fluid dynamics results showed that the relative error of the wall pressure was less than 2.6% for the annular supersonic flowfields. The wall pressure determines the geometric shapes and mechanical properties of waveriders. The pressure center of a waverider can be shifted by 12% of the length in the flow direction and 7.4% of the width in the crossflow direction by altering the input wall pressure. This shift will cause the waverider to produce more than 30% extra trim drag when cruising at the design Mach number.