AERODYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF AIR-TO-AIR BVR

MISSILE
VERTICAL:

AEROSPACE & DEFENCE

SERVICE:

ENGINEERING SERVICES
TECHNOLOGY:

CFD

Our customer is a premier defense organization that develops state of

the art missile systems. They are engaged with development of beyond
visual-range air-to-air (BVR) missile. Being guided to hit a moving target,
it undertakes high angle of attack maneuvers at supersonic speeds. It
was thought that presence of external protrusions like wire tunnels &
launch shoes may generates lateral instability making it difficult to guide
the missile. In order to maintain control effectiveness through guidance
algorithm, it was therefore, necessary to characterize the lateral forces
& rolling moment on the missile at extreme flight conditions.
Zeus Numerix recommended high fidelity turbulent viscous CFD
simulation of the missile as flow separation and its interference was
expected due to presence of multiple control surfaces. Zeus Numerix
opted for its proprietary pre-processor (GridZ, structured multi-block
mesh), CFD solver (FlowZ, compressible & parallel) and post-processor
(ViewZ) modules of CFDExpert for the simulations. The simulation
matrix of 31 CFD runs, as well as grid independence & validation studies,
was completed within two months on in-house HPC.

Figure 17: Flow features around the supersonic BVR missile

Customer was provided with tabulated static aero-dynamics coefficients
along with a detailed & thorough analysis of results including
component loads and it characteristics. The forces and moment from
protruding components as a function of Mach number, angle of attack
and missile roll orientation was of particular interest to the customer as
it helped to modify the guidance law.

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