Aerodynamic Characteristics of a Wedge and Cone at Hypersonic Mach Numbers

The problem of predicting the aerodynamic characteristics of configurations at hypersonic Mach numbers has been unreliable due to the lack of experimental data. By predicting the aerodynamic characteristics of a wedge and cone at Mach numbers from 2 to 12 by four different supersonic theories, a basis for future experimental comparison was provided. An attempt was made to correlate the theoretical result of a 20° wedge and cone with wind tunnel test results of the same configuration. However, due to scheduling difficulties the experimental phase was not completed in time enough to be included in this report. The theoretical results indicate that the hypersonic similarity solution gives close agreement with the exact solution for large Mach numbers. The linearized and second order theory deviates from the exact solution for Mach numbers greater than 3.