Aerodynamics for a Sub-Orbital Reusable Experimental Vehicle

In this work an aerodynamic model for the calculation of the aerodynamic force and moment coefficients for a Sub-Orbital Reusable Experimental Vehicle is proposed. The aerodynamic model, which is based on physical properties of the flows around obstacles, provides the mathematical expression for each aerodynamic coefficient. These analytical forms incorporate various free parameters which have to be identified through opportune data elaborations. These free parameters are here identified by means of a best fitting procedure applied to data which are the result of wind tunnel testing and computational fluid dynamics. The aerodynamic model is applied to a vehicle developed and realized at the Italian Center of Aerospace Research (CIRA). The study is motivated by the fact that the aerodynamics of a reentry vehicle is characterized by complex flow structure about the aircraft which in turn cause great variations of all the aerodynamic coefficients with Mach number and angle of attack. Due to this complexity, these coefficients vary in a complicate fashion, therefore the modeling of the vehicle aerodynamics in the transonic regime is a difficult task which requires the accounting for the compressibility effects which happen for the various combinations of angles of attack and flight Mach number.