Influence of surface temperature on aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics of an inflatable decelerator

Regarding the hypersonic flow over an Earth-reentry inflatable decelerator from 80 km to 50 km altitude, the influence of surface temperature on the aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics of the vehicle were investigated. By applying surface radiative equilibrium condition and several fixed surface temperatures (300 K to 2000 K) as boundary conditions, a system of Navier-Stokes equations incorporating turbulent effects was numerically solved based on finite volume method. The results show that the surface pressure on the forebody and afterbody demonstrates almost coincident distribution at different surface temperatures. With the surface temperature rising, the shear stress on the forebody and afterbody presents most augmentation by 47.35% and 40.77% respectively. The axial force coefficient decreases while the normal force coefficient and pitch moment coefficient increase with a maximum difference of 9%. Additionally, the surface heat flux varies differently on each surface region with the surface temperature rising whereas the total heat load decreases, and the maximum discrepancy of heat flux exceeds 10% on the nose, cone body and centerbody bottom.