An aerothermodynamic study of slender conical vehicles

A numerical study was performed to assess the applicability of some current techniques which can be used for aerothermal predictions over slender spherically blunted cones. Predictions using a viscous-shock-layer method and several engineering approaches were compared with experimental results from flight and ground-based tests, with each other, and with other detailed results. Good agreement was obtained in comparisons with laminar and turbulent heating data from the Reentry F flight vehicle and with the wind-tunnel data. In particular, the viscous-shock-layer method was shown to yield excellent comparisons and should be useful in providing detailed flowfield and surface values for slender blunted cones. Additional predictions were obtained with these methods for two 5-deg half-angle cones with different nose radii to illustrate the effects of nose bluntness and angle of attack on drag and heat transfer. These results demonstrate the benefit of nose blunting with respect to heating and drag for laminar and transitional flow at zero-lift conditions and the benefit of heating reduction at angle of attack. Detailed comparison of the engineering code predictions with the viscous-shock-layer results for these additional cases generally showed good agreement except for the laminar prodictions at angle of attack on the forward cone surface. Nonequilibrium calculations at 0-deg angle of attack showed that substantial benefits of low surface catalysis existed only in the nose-dominated region.