Performance Evaluation of Hypersonic Flow Past Blunt Bodies with Aerospikes using Numerical Techniques

The majority of hypersonic vehicle designs focus on reducing drag and controlling flow enthalpy. Aerodynamic drag is caused by high surface pressure, which creates a detached bow shock in ahead of the blunt nose. These flow separation bow shocks impact hypersonic vehicle speed, range, and heating. Converting the detached shockwave to an attached shock wave (family of the weaker shock) and keeping the dissipation area large enough for a higher heat dissipation rate is a straightforward way to solve aerothermodynamics problems. The most popular technique involves introducing an antenna-like structure known as an Aerospike, placed right at the stagnation point over the blunt head. The aerospike contributes to the generation of the attached shock wave, which reduces the pressure drag component and results in recirculation zones over of the nose. This paper evaluates the performance of an aerospike hypersonic vehicle under various off-design conditions using the ANSYS Fluent software. Flow simulations are validated with available experimental data and tested under various turbulence models. All numerical simulations of the vehicle with aerospike are studied in detail, including flow properties such as pressure, temperature, density, turbulence model, etc. The paper concluded that drag reduction results under specific flow conditions were achieved by incorporating the aerospike into the hypersonic vehicle. Furthermore, this paper also contributes to the future research field of hypersonic aeromechanical engineering.