Development and Application of Computational Tool Using Local Surface Inclination Methods for Preliminary Analysis of Hypersonic Vehicles

This work presents a computational tool for preliminary analysis of hypersonic vehicles, based on local surface inclination methods: the HipeX. This program was developed for reading standard triangulation language (STL) geometry files and calculating pressure coefficient and temperature distributions over vehicle’s surface using the Newtonian, modified Newtonian or tangent-wedge methods. Validations were made with a cylinder and a sphere, where only the Newtonian method was applied, and with experimental data from Apollo capsule at Mach 10, where the Newtonian and the modified Newtonian methods were applied. These validations presented the code capability to read geometries as well as to estimate aerodynamic force coefficients. A preliminary application was to predict the aerodynamic force coefficients of a generic hypersonic vehicle over constant dynamic pressure trajectories of 23,940, 60,000 and 95,760 N/m2 with zero angle of attack. With a fixed dynamic pressure of 60,000 N/m2, this vehicle was tested over several Mach numbers and with angle of attack variation from -10 to 10 deg. Zero angle of attack investigation showed minor changes on the force coefficients with altitude, while the variation of angle of attack produced more pronounced variations on these parameters. Maximum flow temperatures over vehicle’s surface were estimated ranging from 850 to 5,315 K.