FLIGHT SIMULATION OF A WAVERIDER-BASED HYPERSONIC VEHICLE

This work presents three-dimensional, hypersonic flow computations for a waverider-based hypersonic vehicle with finlets. The waverider geom etry, as composed of an airframe and a reflexed trailing-edge, is deri ved from a perturbed hypersonic flow past a cone with combined transve rse and small longitudinal curvature. The flowfield simulations associ ated with the design and off-design flight conditions are performed by solving the three-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equations th at are incorporated with an implicit upwind-biased finite volume algor ithm. Also, the lift, drag, skin friction, lift-to-drag ratio, and sta tic margin are calculated. In the on-design conditions (M(infinity)=4. 0), the inviscid and viscous numerical results correlate well with the estimates of the hypersonic small-disturbance theory. In addition, th e influence on aerodynamic performance and stability of adding finlets is discussed here. Furthermore, the variations of aerodynamic perform ance caused by altering the angle-of-attack from -10 to +10 degrees ar e investigated. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.