Heated wind-tunnel experiments and numerical investigations onhypersonic blunt cone aerodynamic heating

Aero-thermal analysis of hypersonic vehicles is of fundamental interest for structural design and material selection. Therefore, we investigated the aerodynamic heating characteristics of a blunt cone made from stainless steel in a combustion-heated hypersonic wind tunnel with a free stream of Mach 6. During ground testing, the temperature rise of the model from room temperature to thermal equilibrium under the influence of hypersonic flow was measured with thermocouples, and the equilibrium temperature of the blunt section was 1130–1150 K. In addition, the transient thermal response of the model to the aerothermodynamic load was simulated by fluid-thermal coupled analysis and compared with the measurement data. The obtained results correspond well to typical thermocouple data, and the temperature predicts the measurement with an accuracy on the order of 8.8%. On this foundation, some factors affecting the radiation equilibrium temperature of the blunt cone are also discussed. The analysis indicates that emissivity has an important influence, while turbulence intensity at the nozzle inlet has minimal impact.