Computational fluid dynamics applied to the aerodynamic design of a land‐based supersonic vehicle

The BLOODHOUND SSC project was publicly announced in October 2008, with a primary engineering objective of designing, constructing and running a vehicle capable of achieving a speed of 1000 mph on land. The aerodynamic design of this vehicle is to be accomplished using computational simulation only and this paper describes the development and application of the approach adopted. The computational model employs a cell vertex finite volume algorithm for the solution of compressible viscous flow problems on unstructured hybrid meshes. A one equation turbulence model is adopted and the solution of the steady flow equations is obtained by explicit relaxation. For the combination of high Mach number, complex geometry and complex boundary conditions, involving rotating surfaces and a rolling ground, a consistent HLLC numerical flux function is adopted to ensure a stable procedure. To illustrate the impact of the approach upon the final configuration, a number of simulations undertaken to aid the aerodynamic design are described. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2010

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