A STUDY ON THE PREDICTION OF THE BASE FLOW CHARACTERISTICS OF A LAUNCH VEHICLE USING CFD

Numerical simulations are made to predict the axial force coefficients of a two-stage launch vehicle, and the results are compared with those by wind tunnel tests. It is found that the forebody axial force is not affected by whether the base of the body is modeled or not. Modeling the sting support used in wind tunnel tests reduced the base axial force compared to the results without it. The present calculation shows that the forebody axial forces are underestimated while the base axial forces are overestimated. The total axial force, therefore, compares with the experimental data with better accuracy by cancelling out the errors of opposite signs. Modeling of the sting support in numerical simulations is found to be necessary to get a better agreement with the experiments for both base and overall axial force coefficients.