Numerical Investigation of Drag and Heat Flux Reduction in Hypersonic Vehicle with Aerospike

Abstract

To reduce the aerodynamic and thermal load of hypersonic vehicle, the aerodynamic performance of a blunt body vehicle with a aerospike on its head is studied numerically. The influence of head shape and L/D (length-to-diameter) ratio of aerospike on flow field characteristics, drag and heat flux reduction was analyzed. The numerical results show that the aerospike can effectively reduce aerodynamic and thermal load. The optimal configuration can obtain 68.55% drag reduction efficiency and 75.23% heat flux reduction efficiency. The drag and heat flux reduction performance of conical aerospike are the worst, the drag reduction performance of hemispherical aerospike is the best, and the heat flux reduction performance of flat-face aerospike is the best. Increasing the L/D ratio of aerospike significantly improves the drag and heat flux reduction performance. With the L/D ratio of the aerospike increasing, both the drag reduction efficiency and the heat flux reduction efficiency increase, but the change rates of drag reduction efficiency and heat flux reduction efficiency decrease.