Experimental and numerical study on the aero-heating characteristics of blunted waverider

Aero-heating analysis is very important for the thermal protection system design of blunted waverider. In this paper, the heat flux distributions on the nose region and leading edge, the upper surface and the lower surface are studied with numerical and experiment methods, including the effects of attack angle and sideslip angle. The results show that high heat flux is limited in a small region around the stagnation point, and the influence of attack angle on the aero-heating of nose region can be neglected. Because even small sideslip angle may induce great enhanced aero-heating on the windward side of blunted waverider, zero degree sideslip angle is suggested in the present paper. With this assumption, the thermal materials of nose region, leading edge and upper surface can be chosen based on their aero-heating under on-design condition; while for the lower surface, the thermal materials should be determined by the aero-heating under maximum angle of attack. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.