Heat fluxes inside a cavity placed at the nose of a projectile measured in a shock tunnel at mach 4.5

Abstract

A blunt-nosed supersonic projectile, equipped with a cavity, is a good alternative to reduce high nose heating rates preventing surface melting followed by ablation. For this purpose, tests were done in ISL's shock tunnel STB. This facility allows reproducing atmospheric flow conditions present during a missile flight at various altitudes. The flow was visualized by shadowgraphs and the heat flux densities were measured with thermocouples at the bottom of various cavity geometries. A numerical simulation was also carried out using the FLUENT code. The comparison between numerical results and measurements is quite satisfactory. An important result of this study is that the deepest cavity has the smallest heat flux. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.