High-temperature gas effects on aerodynamic characteristics of waverider

This paper focuses on the analysis of high-temperature effect on a conical waverider and it is a typical configuration of near space vehicles. Two different gas models are used in the numerical simulations, namely the thermochemical non-equilibrium and perfect gas models. The non-equilibrium flow simulations are conducted with the usage of the parallel non-equilibrium program developed by the authors while the perfect gas flow simulations are carried out with the commercial software Fluent. The non-equilibrium code is validated with experimental results and grid sensitivity analysis is performed as well. Then, numerical simulations of the flow around the conical waverider with the two gas models are conducted. In the results, differences in the flow structures as well as aerodynamic performances of the conical waverider are compared. It is found that the thermochemical non-equilibrium effect is significant mainly near the windward boundary layer at the tail of the waverider, and the non-equilibrium influence makes the pressure center move forward to about 0.57% of the whole craft’s length at the altitude of 60 km.