Performance Characteristics of Flat-Faced Aerodisk Spike on Drag Reduction for Various Angles of Attack

Present numerical study investigates the performance characteristics of a flat-faced aerodisk spike on drag with varying angles of attack in the hypersonic regime. An aerospike attached to the blunt body tends to streamline the flow and transforms the strong detached shock into relatively weaker oblique shock. This leads to reduction in the wave drag acting on the body. However, the extent of drag reduction is highly dependent on geometry, length, and orientation of the aerospike. The present analysis is conducted to show the effect of varying angle of attack. An open source CFD tool, OpenFOAM is used to solve the 3D RANS equations using the realizable k-ϵ turbulence model. After validating the methodology with available experimental drag and lift coefficient data in literature, simulations are carried out for different angles of attack in order to examine the flow features.