Investigation of the common nose cone shapes in different gas mixtures in high Knudsen numbers

The numerical simulation of different types of nose cone shapes involving conical, Bi-conic, parabolic, spherical Blunt cone and tangent ogive in high Knudsen numbers flow and for three different mixtures O2–N2, He–Ar and He–Xe are investigated in this article. A computer code based on the method of Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) has been developed to study numerically the supersonic flow around these cone shapes in rarefaction condition. In order to verify the computer code, the flow field in the slip regime is solved and compared with the results of Navier Stokes equation with the slip boundary condition. The results obtained in the supersonic flows regime show that the parabolic and tangent ogive nose shapes have the least mean shear stress distribution and lowest tip temperature.