Publications Details

Hypersonic flight testing

Williamson, W.

As part of the design process for a hypersonic vehicle, it is necessary to predict the aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic environment for flight conditions. This involves combining results obtained from ground testing with analytical modeling to predict the aerodynamics and heating for all conditions of interest. The question which always arises is, how well will these models predict what is actually seen in a flight environment? This paper will briefly address ground-testing and analytical modeling and discuss where each is appropriate, and the associated problems with each area. It will then describe flight test options as well as instrumentation currently available and show how flight tests can be used to validate or improve models. Finally, several results will be shown to indicate areas where ground testing and modeling alone are inadequate to accurately predict hypersonic aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics.