Aerothermodynamics of a hypersonic vehicle with a forward-facing parabolic cavity at nose

Abstract

Numerical experiments are carried out using commercially available Navier–Stokes solver to investigate the effect of forward-facing parabolic cavity on the heat fluxes over a spherical nosed blunt body. A wide range of parabolic cavities with depths varying between 2 and 10 mm placed at the nose of sphere-cylinder with base diameter 40 mm and overall length 70 mm have been investigated. The ratio of the cavity radius at intersection with y-axis to depth of cavity (r/d) of these cavities varies from 1.5 to 2.5. All computations have been done at a freestream Mach number of 6.2 and sea level atmospheric conditions assuming air to be a thermally perfect gas. The steady-state solutions obtained through time marching solution of axisymmetric Navier–Stokes equations suggest that the total heat transfer rate, area weighted average heat flux and the peak heat fluxes to the body can be favorably reduced for shallow parabolic cavities.