Aerospike CFD Simulation Considering Shock Wave

Description

Project Description

In this project, we simulated an aerospike using ANSYS Fluent software. This simulation aims to model a cone with an aerospike antenna to how the aerospike antenna will affect shaping shock waves in distance from the nose cone and reducing drag.

A drag-reducing aerospike is a device used to reduce the forebody pressure aerodynamic drag of blunt bodies at supersonic speeds. The aerospike creates a detached shock ahead of the body. A zone of recirculating flow occurs between the shock and the forebody, Which acts like a more streamlined forebody profile, reducing the drag.

The geometry is designed in ANSYS Design Modeler software. The meshing of this present model has been generated by ANSYS Meshing software. The mesh grid is unstructured, and the total cell number is 153,987. the figure below shows an overview of the performed mesh.

Methodology: Aerospike CFD Simulation Considering Shock Wave

k-omega SST model with the speed of 2.5 Mach has been considered for this simulation.

Results

At the end of the solution process, two-dimensional velocity and animation are obtained. The result is showing aerospike resulted from much thinner and weaker Oblique Shock and far from the cone.

This affects drag reduction because the primary shock wave pressure gradient is far from the body. Also, a small separation wave takes place on the cone itself. Also, reattachment of separate waves and oblique shock happens at a distance from the main body and reduces aerothermodynamics’ efficiency.