Numerical Investigation on Aerospike

Induced Flow Field on Blunt Bodies at High Mach

number


Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements
for the degree of
Master of Technology
by
Ayyappankutty k m

Supervisor
Dr Tide p s
Dr. Saju k s


Division of Mechanical Engineering
Cochin University of Science and
Technology, Kochi-22

2014
Contents

Chapter

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 Aero spike induced flow field 4

3 Problem description 5

4 Methodology 6

4.1 Governing equations 7

5 Early Results 8

6 Future plan 8

7 References 9













Chapter-1
Introduction:
High-speed flow past a blunt body generates a bow
shock wave which causes high surface pressure and as a result the
development of high aero dynamic drags. The dynamic pressure on the
surface of the blunt body can be substantially reduced by creating a low
pressure region in front of the blunt body by mounting a spike. The use
of the forward facing spike attached with the shape of a hemispherical
blunt body appears to be most effective and simple method to integrate
the vehicle as compared with the focused energy deposition and
telescopic aero disk .
A blunt body creates a bow shock wave at high
Mach number, which produces a very high in pressure in the forward
region of the hemispherical region, which leads to an increase of high
wave drag during the projectiles flight through the atmosphere. It is
advantageous to have a vehicle with a low drag coefficient in order to
minimize the thrust required from the propulsive system during the
supersonic and hypersonic regime. Aero-spike, energy deposition along
the stagnation streamline, the forward facing jet in the stagnation
pressure zone of a blunt body and the artificial blunted nose cone-out are
studied numerically and experimentally to access the capability to
reduce the aerodynamic drag.
A typical flow over a spike attached to a blunt body is
based on experimental investigations. A schematic of the flow field over
the conical and the aero-disk spiked blunt body at zero angle of attack is
shown in Fig. 1(a) and (b), respectively. The flow field around a spiked
blunt body appears to be very complicated and complex and contains a
number of interesting flow phenomena and characteristic, which has yet
to be investigated. 1



Fig-1(a) Schematic sketch for flow field over conical spiked blunt body

Fig-1(b) Schematic sketch for flow field over aero disc shaped blunt body







2
Chapter-2
Literature review
Motoyama et al. [3] have experimentally investigated
the aerodynamic and heat transfer characteristics of conical,
hemispherical and flat-faced disk attached to the aero-spike for a free
stream Mach number 7, free stream Reynolds number 4x105/m, based
on the cylinder diameter. For L/D = 0.5 and 1.0, and angle-of-attack 0 to
8 deg, where L is the spike length and D is the cylinder diameter. They
found that the aero-disk spike (L/D = 1.0 and aero-disk diameter of 10
mm), has a superior drag reduction capability as compared to the other
aero-spikes
Yamauchi et al. [4] have numerically investigated the
flow field around a spiked blunt body at free stream mach numbers of
2.01, 4.14and 6.80 for different ratio of L/D
Kamaran et al. [5]used a numerical
approach to solve the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The
reattachment point can be moved backward or removed, which depends
on the spike length or the nose configuration. However, because of
the reattachment of the shear layer on the shoulder of the hemispherical
body, the pressure near that point becomes large.
Milicev et al. [6] have experimentally
investigated the influence of four different types of spikes attached
attached to a hemisphere-cylinder body at Mach number 1.89, Reynolds
number 0.38x106The main purpose of the present study is to calculate
surface pressure distributions and aerodynamic drag over the forward
facing spike of various shapes at Mach number 6.The present paper
presents a numerical simulation of the flow field over conical
,hemispherical and flat-disc aero spike attached to blunt body. The focus
of the present numerical analysis is to investigate the based on the
cylinder diameter, and at an angle-of-attack 2 deg. They observed in
their experimental studies that a reliable estimation of the aerodynamic
effects of the spike can be made in conjunction with flow visualization
technique.

2.1 Aerospike induced flow field.
At low hypersonic speeds and angle of attack=0
a detached bow shock stands out in front of the aero disk and remains
away from the dome. As the flow behind the bow shock expands around
the aero disk, a weak compression is formed at its base. The wake flow
caused by the aero disk and the nearly stagnant flow near the dome
creates the conically-shaped recirculation region shown. The region is
separated from the in viscid flow within the bow shock by a flow(fig-2)
separation shock. This shock isolates the recirculation region which
effectively reduces the pressure and heating distributions on the
hemispherical dome and also allows them to be more uniform.
Furthermore, this configuration has a body with a larger diameter than
the dome, creating the potential for additional flow recirculation in the
region near the front face of the body(referred to as the collar) and the
side of the dome .For non-zero angles of attack, the flow field is further
altered by a lee-side vortex structure that is influenced by the presence
presence of the aero spike. The separated, vertical flow region in front of
the dome is unsteady ,which may cause structural fatigue at the aero
spike attachment region. Furthermore, the variation in model wall
wall temperature during a tunnel run will affect the state of the aero
spike boundary layer and subsequent separation shock at the foremost
edge of the recirculation region. All of these phenomena may influence
the dome surface aero thermal characteristics

4

Fig. 2. Schematic of aerospike-induced flowfield [1]

Chapter-3
3-Problem description:
The aero spike model surface geometry is
shown in figure 3[1] The material used for the model was 17-4 PH,H900
stainless steel. It consists of a 4-inch long, 4-inchdiameter cylindrical
body and a 3-inch diameter hemispherical dome. The dome is offset
from the body with a 0.25-inch long, 3-inch diameter cylindrical
extension .The model design allows for the testing of the model with or
without an aero spike, which is threaded at the base and screws into the
dome. The aero spike as used in this series of tests consisted of a 12-inch
long aero spike /aero disk assembly, hereafter referred to as simply the
aero spike



5


Fig. 3. Aerospike surface geometry dimensions (in m).

The test conditions are stagnation pressure of 475N/m2 ,stagnation
temperature of 875K, Reynolds number of 8.0x106 and Mach number of
6.06 at the following angle of attack:
1 Feasibility Assessment at angle of attack = 0
2 Feasibility Assessment at angle of attack = 5
3 Feasibility Assessment at angle of attack =10
4 Feasibility Assessment at angle of attack =20
5 Feasibility Assessment at angle of attack =40

Chapter-4
4.Proposed methodology:
The commercial software Ansys-Fluent14.0 is used
for the numerical simulation of the problem.
The steps involved in modelling are
1 Pre-Processing
2 Analysis
3 Post-Processing
For pre-processing ICEM-CFD is used (Figure-4)
The Discretization Method used is Finite Volume Method (FVM)
6
4.1 Governing equations:
A numerical simulation of the unsteady,
compressible, axi symmetric Navier-Stokes equations is attempted in
order to understand the basic fluid dynamics over forward facing spike
attached to blunt body. The governing equations can be written in the
following strong conservation form:
(1)
where W is conservative state and F and G are in viscid flux vectors, x
and r are axial and radial coordinate system and t is time. The
temperature is related to pressure and density by perfect gas equation of
state as:

(2)

The ratio of the specific heat is assumed constant
and is equal to 1.4. The flow is assumed to be laminar, which is also
consistent to Bogdonoff and Vas [7], Yamauchi et al. [4], Fujita and
Kubota [8], and Boyce et at. [9].








7
Chapter-5
Early results




Fig.4.Aerospike surface geometry dimensions (in m).(Angle of attack=0.

Chapter-6
6.1 Future plan:

Analysis has to be carried out:
(1) Steady state analysis with implicit formulation has to be carried
out.
(2) Pressure based coupled solver formulation will be chosen to
obtain an accurate fast converging solution
(3) k- turbulence model will be employed to simulate turbulence
effects.
Post processing has to be carried out:
For post processing CFD-Post14.0 will be used

8
Chapter-7
References:

1 Lawrence D. Huebner.; Anthony M.Mitchell.; and Ellis J
Boudreaux.: Expiremental results on the feasibility of an Aerospike for
Hypersonic Missiles 33rd Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit
January 9-13, 1995 / Reno, NV
2 R. C. Mehta; R. Kalimuthu ; E. Rathakrishnan .: Flow field analysis
over Aero-disc attached to Blund-Nose body at Mach 6 Proceedings
of the 37th International & 4th National Conference on Fluid Mechanics
and Fluid Power December 16-18, 2010, IIT Madras, Chennai, India.
3 Motoyama, N., Mihara, K., Miyajima, R.,Watanuki, W. andKubota,
H, ThermalProtection and Drag reduction with Use of Spike in
Hypersonic Flow, AIAA Paper 2001-1828, 2001 .
4 Yamauchi, M., Fujjii, K.,Tamura, Y., and Higashino, F.,Numerical
investigation of Hypersonic Flow Around a Spiked Blunt Body, AIAA
paper 93-0887, Jan. 1993
5 Kamaran, Davis H.: Investigation of the Flow Over a Spiked-Nose
Hemisphere-Cylinder at a Mach Number of 6.8, NASA TN D-118,
December 1959.
6 Milicev, S. S., Pavlovic, M. D., Ristic, S. and Vitic, A., On the
influence of spike shape at supersonic flow past blunt bodies,
Mechanics,Automatic Control and Robotics, Vol. 3, No. 12,2002, pp.
371-382.
7 Bogdonoff, S. M. and Vas, I. E., Preliminary Investigations of
Spike Bodies at Hypersonic Speeds, Jr. of the Aerospace Sciences,
Vol.26, No.2, Feb-1959, pp. 65-74.
9


8 Fujita, M., and Kubota, H., Numerical Simulation of Flowfield over
a Spiked Blunt Nose, Computational Fluid Dynamics Journal, Vol. 1,
No. 2, 1992, pp.187-195.
9. Boyce, R., Neely, A., Odam, J., and Stewart, B., CFD Analysis of the
HYCAUSE Nose-Cone, AIAA Paper 2005-3339, May 2005.























10