Aerothermodynamic Aspects of Railgun-Assisted Launches of Projectiles With Sub- and Low-Earth-Orbit Payloads

A Railgun-concept for the launch of small payloads into low-Earth orbits is currently under investigation. The first major project milestone foresees a 32-MJ railgun system able to launch nonpropelled projectiles with experiments for high-atmospheric research to an altitude of 115 km. This will be followed by a system to launch single-stage rocket-propelled projectiles to put in orbit nanosatellites using a 3.4-GJ railgun with a length of 180 m. One of the main issues to be investigated is the extreme thermal conditions the projectile's surfaces are exposed to, namely high temperatures and high thermal loads. These are caused by friction and turbulent flow properties, when the projectile rushes through the dense Earth's atmosphere in less than 30 s. The important questions to be answered for the design of a hypersonic projectile are the determination of the duration, magnitude, and location of the maximum temperatures with respect to the projectile's surface and its corresponding internal structure. For the determination of the complicated physical conditions, a two-step approach is used. In a so-called predesign phase, the HF3T code of the DLR is applied to estimate time-dependent temperature changes on the projectile's surface and/or within the material's structure as a function of the trajectory parameters. Finally, the three-degree-of-freedom trajectory program TRAJECTORY 3D of DLR is used to generate a detailed time-dependent data set, which includes the values for projectile velocity, Mach and Reynolds numbers, and atmospheric properties as a function of altitude. This data set is exchangeable with the TAU code of DLR for the solution of the Navier–Stokes equations, enabling pseudo-unsteady flow solutions along the trajectory. The solutions resulting from both approaches are then compared with emphasis on the surface temperature distributions. This strategy allows the verification of the feasibility of the proposed design solution for the railgun