Experimental study of slender vehicles at hypersonic speeds

An experimental investigation of the hypersonic flow over (i) a wing-body configuration, (ii) a hemi-spherically blunted cone-cylinder body and (iii) a one-half- power-law body has been conducted for M,, = 8.2 and Re,, = 9.35x104 per cm. The tests were performed at model incidences, a=0,5 and 10° for flap deflection angles, (3 = 0,5,15, and 25° for the wing-body. The incidence ranged from -3 to 10° for the cone- cylinder and -5 to 15° for the power-law body. (i) The schlieren pictures showing top and side views of the model indicate that the body nose shock does not intersect the wing throughout the range of a under investigation. Detailed pressure measurements on the lower surface of the wing and flap along with the liquid crystal pictures suggest that the body nose shock does not strike the flap surfaces either. The wing leading edge shock is found to be attached at a=0 and 5° but detached at a= 10°. The liquid crystal pictures and surface pressure measurements indicated attached flow on the lower surface of the wing and flap for 13 =0 and 5° at all values of a under test. However at a= 0°, as the flap angle is increased to 15° the flow separates ahead of the hinge line. As incidence is increased the boundary layer becomes transitional giving rise to complex separation patterns around the flap hinge line. The spherically blunted body nose causes strong entropy layer effects over the wing and the trailing edge flap. A Navier-Stokes solution indicated a thick entropy layer of approximately constant thickness all around the cylindrical section of the body at zero incidence. However, at an incidence of 10° the layer tapers and becomes thinner under the body. The surface pressure over the wing and the plateau pressure for separated flow was found to increase from the root to the tip. This is partly because of the decrease in local Reynolds number across the span, however in the present case, entropy layer effects also affected separation. The entropy layer effects were found to reduce the peak pressures obtainable on the flap. The peak pressures, over the portion of the flap unaffected by entropy layer effects, could be estimated assuming quasi two dimensional flow. (ii) Force measurements were made for the blunted cone-cylinder alone as well as with the delta wing, with trailing-edge flap, attached to it. The lift, drag, and pitching moment characteristics for the cone-cylinder agree reasonably well with the modified Newtonian theory and the N-S results. The addition of a wing to the cone-cylinder body increases the lift as weil as the drag coefficient but there is an overall increase in the lift/drag ratio. The deflection of a flap from 0° to 25° increases the lift and drag coefficients at all the incidences tested. However, the lift/drag ratio is reduced showing the affects of separation over the wing. The experimental results on the wing-body are compared with the theoretical estimates based upon two-dimensional shock-expansion theory. (iii) The lift, and drag characteristics of a one-half-power-law body are compared with other existing results. The addition of strakes to the power-law body are found to improve its aerodynamic efficiency without any significant change in its pitching moment characteristics