Aerothermodynamics of generic re-entry vehicle with a series of aerospikes at nose

•Two aerodisks in series are investigated for peak heat flux and drag.•Peak peat flux increases for shorter aerospikes with l/D=1 and 1.25.•Longer aerospikes with l/D=1.5 offers reduced peak heat flux.•Aerospikes in series can offer heat flux reduction for turbulent flows also.•9% and 44% reduction in peak heat flux and drag respectively obtained for l/D=1.5.

Re-entry of a blunt nosed vehicle is one of the most intriguing problems in any space programme. Especially in light of various space tourism possibilities, there are many works concerning re-entry of commercial blunt nosed space vehicles. In this paper, a generic blunt body re-entry model represented by a hemisphere-cylinder, fitted axisymmetrically with an aerodisk aerospike at the nose is investigated numerically with commercially available control volume based axisymmetric flow solver. The scaled down re-entry model has a base diameter of 40 mm and an overall length of 100 mm. A 6 mm diameter aerospike fitted axisymmetrically at the nose has a hemispherical cap from which another aerospike of 4 mm diameter protrudes which again has a hemispherical cap. Two dimensional compressible, axisymmetric Navier Stokes Equations are solved for a turbulent hypersonic flow of a 5 species, chemically reacting air in thermal equilibrium with free stream conditions of Mach no., static pressure and temperature of 10.1, 16,066 Pa and 216.65 K, respectively. The results are compared with that of re-entry model without any aerospike. Among the cases investigated, the spiked blunt body having two aerospikes in series with lengths l1 and l2 equal to 30 and 20 respectively and overall length-to-diameter ratio of 1.5 showed a favourable reduction in the peak reattachment heat flux along with high reduction in aerodynamic drag and thus stands as a prospective case for blunt body nose configuration for hypersonic flight.