Preliminary Study of Aerodynamic Performance for Waverider-based Hypersonic Vehicles with Dorsal Mounted Engines

Abstract

To aim at improving the aerodynamic performance of hypersonic air-breathers, a family of novel waverider-based configurations, which integrate two dorsal mounted engines, is proposed. The key feature of this type of configurations is that the lower surface of the vehicle could fully preserve the characteristics of waveriders, thus it is conducive to enhancing the lift-to-drag ratio effectively. Basic waveriders of configurations are obtained by using a method that generating waverider as two parts, which are defined by the leading edge and the trailing edge respectively. The forebody of the vehicle is designed by rotating and assembling two waverider-based-surfaces, which are the front part of basic waveriders. A group of conceptual configurations with different aspect ratio is presented. Computational Fluid Dynamics is employed to evaluate the aerodynamic performance. The results demonstrate that the maximum lift-to-drag ratio of configurations is greater than 5 in viscous condition; meanwhile, the forebody could produce a good quality flowfield for the propulsion system.