Effect of Tip Curvature on the Aerodynamic Performance of an Osculating Cone Waverider
摘要
Modern mission requirements for long-range maneuverable hypersonic vehicles for space, military, and transportation applications necessitate vehicle design innovations. Waveriders are special aerodynamic shapes that are capable of generating high lift to drag ratio in a hypersonic regime. Osculating cone waveriders are specially famous due to its much larger design space making it cater to multiple design constraints. Even though, waveriders are designed at cruise conditions ( \(\alpha,\beta =0\) ), they are still required to display sufficient off design characteristics. Three waveriders are designed with distinguishable tip curvatures viz. anhedral, dihedral and flat. Viscous laminar simulations are carried out using commercial CFD++ code to assess off design characteristics at different side slip angles ( \(\beta \) ). The flow structure for dihedral and flat showed similarities, however it changed significantly for anhedral. The side force increased with increase in side slip angle and is highest in case of dihedral waverider. All the three waveriders are found to possess static directional stability. In terms of lateral stability, dihedral and flat waveriders are found to be stable, whereas anhedral waverider is unstable.