Dynamic Aerothermal Analysis of a Cone-Cylinder Flight Body

Exploring the aerothermal characteristic of a flight body has great military applications in tracking, locating, thermal protection, and infrared stealth technologies. Available studies are mostly focused on the transient aerothermal characteristics of vehicles in some specific flight datum, which are not able to satisfy the requirements in real-time tracking for an infrared system. This paper probes into a method of dynamic thermal analysis of a cone-cylinder flight body with a high spinning speed. Firstly, a theoretical model for analyzing the dynamic aerothermal characteristics is established using the thermal node-network method. Then, trajectory datum and the convective heat-transfer coefficients are solved simultaneously. Besides, the trajectory datum in supersonic, transonic, and subsonic regimes is separately defined as the boundary conditions, and fluid-thermal analysis methods are implemented by a combination of sliding mesh and multicoordinate approaches. Finally, the flow characteristics are analyzed and compared with disregarding the rotational speed. The results demonstrate that there are significant differences between the two cases, especially at the high-speed regimes. This study further confirms that it is essential to conduct the aerothermal analysis from a dynamic point of view, and taking the impacts of coupling motion into account is also of vital importance.