Numerical and experimental study on waverider with blunt leading edge

• Flow characteristics of waverider are studied by numerical and experiment methods.
• The mechanism of bluntness impact is studied for waverider.
• The feasibility of nonuniform blunt waverider is validated in this paper.

Waverider is considered to be a good candidate for hypersonic flights, but due to the serious aero-heating and facture limitations, its infinite sharp leading edge should be blunted. In this paper, numerical method is used to study the flow characteristics of blunt waverider, including the mechanism of bluntness impact and the feasibility of nonuniform blunt method. An experiment has been done in FD-14A hypersonic shock wind tunnel to obtain the flow structure and heat flux distribution in the nose region of one waverider model. The results show that bluntness induces a detached bow shock around the nose region and spillage along the leading edge. As the blunt radius enlarges, the aerodynamic performance degrades remarkably. Fortunately, the severe aero-heating is limited in a small region around stagnation point for blunt waverider, and smaller blunt radius can be used for most of the leading edge. Owing to the improvement of aerodynamic performance and negligible influence on thermal protection system, the concept of “nonuniform blunt method” is proved to be feasible for hypersonic waverider design.