Assessment of Numerical Method by Experimental Data for Integrated Hypersonic Vehicles

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of rapid aerodynamic assessment and experimental verification of integrated hypersonic vehicles. Based on the adaptive Cartesian grid system, the aerodynamic performance of the air-breathing hypersonic vehicle is evaluated. Corresponding shrunken experimental model is investigated in FL-28 transient hypersonic wind tunnel. The grid-independent validation confirmes the proposed meshing method and optimal grid parameters. The convergent method is used for the aircraft model to calculate several flight conditions in cold state, and the calculated results are compared with the wind tunnel test data. The results show that in order to validate the accurate non-viscous dynamic characteristics of both internal and external flows, it is necessary to locally encrypt the grids of inner flow channel while ensuring the overall grid density of the aircraft. Although the computational time increases after grid encryption, the rapid prediction method of aerodynamic performance meets the requirements for engineering design. Compared with experimental results, there are several shockwave features invisible in the numerical results due to the simplification of solution procedure. The aerodynamic force coefficients obtained by the numerical method are verified by the experimental data and the same numerical method can be used in the conceptual design phase of aerodynamic shapes, which can greatly shorten the development cycle.

Keywords

• Aerodynamic characteristics; Internal and external flow integration; Rapid simulation assessment; Wind tunnel test.