Heat Transfer Study of a Conically Shaped Hypersonic Vehicle in Glide

A hypersonic boost-glide trajectory is calculated for an initial altitude of 60 km and a velocity after boost of 3.7 km/s. The hypersonic vehicle travels 2750 km before it reaches its destination over a flight time of 21.75 minutes. The aeroheating effects of a conically shaped hypersonic vehicle on the re-entry trajectory is calculated using a semi-empirical model for the surface heat flux. The maximum heat flux value is calculated to be 4 MW/m(2) at the stagnation point. The vehicle surface temperature is coupled with the surface heat flux and has a maximum of 2980 K. Several materials are considered for the hypersonic vehicle and it is shown that those with a high thermal conductivity lead to reductions in the vehicle surface temperature. Comparisons of the empirical model with simulations ran using ANSYS FLUENT (TM) show that the calculated heat flux and vehicle surface temperature agree within +/- 30% of the simulated values. The maximum heat flux from the simulations is 4.4 MW/m(2) which corresponds to a surface temperature maximum of 3047.2 K.