Experimental demonstration of a new concept of drag reduction and thermal protection for hypersonic vehicles

A new idea of drag reduction and thermal protection for hypersonic vehicles is proposed based on the combination of a physical spike and lateral jets for shock-reconstruction. The spike recasts the bow shock in front of a blunt body into a conical shock, and the lateral jets work to protect the spike tip from overheating and to push the conical shock away from the blunt body when a pitching angle exists during flight. Experiments are conducted in a hypersonic wind tunnel at a nominal Mach number of 6. It is demonstrated that the shock/shock interaction on the blunt body is avoided due to injection and the peak pressure at the reattachment point is reduced by 70% under a 4° attack angle. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10632090) and the National Aerodynamic Pre-Research Foundation (513130401).