Displacement surface calculations for a hypersonic aircraft

A method is presented to calculate the three-dimensional displacement surface about a hypersonic aircraft. This calculation requires a flow-field-solution to at least the thin-layer Navier-Stokes equations about the aircraft as input. An upwind, finite-volume code developed at NASA Langley Research Center was used to obtain the flow-field solution. The displacement surface is the three-dimensional counterpart to the two-dimensional displacement thickness. Flow-field solutions, along with the displacement surface calculations, are presented for a generic hypersonic aircraft at a Mach number of 24.5 and angle of attack of zero and one degree.