Aerodynamic Investigation for Prospective Aerospace Vehicle in the Transitional Regime

The basic quantitative tool for the study of hypersonic rarefied flows is the direct simulation Monte Carlo method (DSMC). The DSMC method requires a large amount of computer memory and performance and is unreasonably expensive at the first stage of spacecraft design and trajectory analysis. A possible solution to this problem is approximate engineering methods. However, the Monte Carlo method remains the most reliable approach to compare to the engineering methods that provide good results for the global aerodynamic coefficients of various geometry designs. This paper presents the calculation results of aerodynamic characteristics for spacecraft vehicles in the free molecular, the transitional and the continuum regimes using the local engineering method. Results and methods would be useful to calculate aerodynamics for new-generation hypersonic vehicle designs.