Configuration trade and code validation study on a conical hypersonic vehicle

A study has been conducted on a generic wing-cone transatmospheric vehicle at Mach numbers form 2.5 to 4.5. The objectives of the study were to experimentally define the aerodynamic characteristics of the vehicle and evaluate several computational aerodynamic prediction methods through comparison with the experimental results. The baseline wing-cone configuration fuselage consisted of a 5 deg half-angle cone forebody, cylindrical midbody, and 9 deg truncated cone afterbody. The 4-percent-thick diamond airfoil wing had an aspect ratio of 1. Several configuration variables were investigated to provide trade information on canard, wing-position and incidence, vertical tail, and nose bluntness effects. Results of the study show that wing-position and wing-incidence effects on the longitudinal aerodynamic characteristics can be significantly influenced by wing-body interference. The use of positive wing incidence to provide favorable forebody orientation for possible inlet performance improvement is accompanied by trim drag and lift-drag ratio penalties. The lateral-directional stability characteristics were strongly influenced by the location of the vertical tails. The higher-order full-potential method provided better estimates of the aerodynamic characteristics than either the linearized supersonic potential method or the tangent-cone/tangent-wedge/shock-expansion on method.