Hypersonic performance of a lifting elliptic cone with and without strakes

Side-by-side experimental and computational studies were conducted on a rig ht elliptic cone with and without strakes, and comparisons were made to eva luate the quality of each approach. For the tests the Cranfield University College of Aeronautics hypersonic gun tunnel was employed, at a Mach number of 8.2 and a Reynolds number of 1.76 x 10(6), based on cone length, using schlieren photography, oil-dot technique, pressure, and forces measurements . The boundary layer was laminar. The computational study employed a three- dimensional, high resolution, iterative, finite volume parabolized Navier-S tokes solver. An estimation model of the aerodynamic forces for the cone wi th and without strakes was developed based on the standard Newtonian theory .