Numerical analysis on the active cooling characteristics for a hypersonic vehicle leading edge and coolant distribution strategy

When a hypersonic vehicle is flying at a high Mach number, its leading edge is apt to suffer extremely high heat fluxes induced by aerodynamic heating. The onboard aviation kerosene RP-3 is an excellent coolant to absorb the heat from the heated leading walls. In this work, three new kinds of bionic shaped cooling structures (T-type, Y-type, and H-type channels), are designed for the active cooling of the leading edge, which are compared with traditional parallel cooling structure (P-type), regarding the pressure penalty, maximum temperature, average Nusselt number, overall performance factor, and the cooling efficiency. Meanwhile, different coolant distribution strategies (constant supply, variable supply, and segmented supply strategy) are proposed to deal with the varied aerodynamic heating flux conditions when the hypersonic vehicle undergoes actual flight missions. The results show that the bionic shaped cooling channels have better cooling performances, with the maximum temperature of leading edge reduced by 673 K for the Y-type, 651 K for the T-type, and 525 K for the H-type channels at Re = 892. In addition, the variable supply strategy presents a relatively lower temperature and a more stable temperature variation for both the solid structure and coolant fluid, and so is the most suitable coolant distribution strategy.