The complicated real gas effects occurring at hypersonic speeds influence the vehicle’s performance and design. Therefore, it is important to incorporate high-fidelity techniques, such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD), into the design and optimization process. This work builds a reliable and efficient gradient-based optimization approach that incorporates CFD using analytical sensitivity techniques. A shape optimization approach is developed using Bézier curves and radial basis functions to define the geometry. An intrusive analytical sensitivity analysis is developed to solve the sensitivity equations with a generalized minimum residual solver and leverages the line-implicit solver employed in the CFD to precondition the system. This technique is applied to the geometry of a hypersonic reentry vehicle, IRV-2, to reduce the drag without increasing the pressure, heat flux, or total surface heat transfer rate into the vehicle. This research considers the shape of the entire vehicle and produces a reduction in total vehicle drag of up to 5.7%. The optimization is performed at three IRV-2 trajectory points, individually, to understand the influence of flight conditions on the optimized design. Although the lower altitude optimized designs produce a smaller reduction in drag, they consistently reduce drag when evaluated along the first portion of the trajectory.


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    Title :

    Aerothermodynamic Sensitivity Analysis and Optimization of Hypersonic Reentry Vehicle


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2025-01-01




    Type of media :

    Conference paper , Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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