Flow Interaction with Proposed Novel Nose Cone Shapes with Dimples for SLV in Varying Speed Regimes

As the aerospace industry expands at an exponential rate, there has been an increasing demand for efficient space transportation vehicle design. To keep up with the pace, new design aspects must be introduced, as well as enhancement or modification of existing systems or designs to meet specific mission requirements. The surface of specific shapes, which are currently in use and recently developed bi-conic nose cone shapes, has been modified by introducing dimples. According to the literature, concave shapes on the leading edge of an aircraft's control surfaces have been shown to homogenize the behavior of the boundary layer, thereby reducing drag loads. It traps the weakly energized flow portions, resulting in more uniform boundary layer loads, and has been shown to improve control surface stability in a particular flow regime. This paper aims to extend previous work by analyzing the effects of dimpled surfaces in terms of the most appropriate established non-dimensional aerodynamic and thermal parameters and creating a dataset of these new designs. A computer-aided design software, "CATIA V5" has been used to create unique design models with the configurations i.e. the number of dimples and varying linear spacing between intrusions, shape, and size i.e. depth and eccentricity of intrusions. Furthermore, these designs have been computationally simulated in "ANSYS Fluent," an advanced fluid simulating software, in subsonic, transonic, and supersonic flow regimes to imitate the missile/flight Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV) profile. This research has the potential to provide significant insight into the flow separation point and its effect on the nature of flow over the surface, thereby serving as additional flow controllers and crucial correlations between regimes and geometric parameters. This analysis of recently developed designs would be extremely useful for characterizing and optimizing shapes corresponding to the operating conditions of the mission. This understanding of the aerodynamic effects of dimples would eventually allow engineers and researchers to use more efficient nose cone structures. As a futuristic scope over multiple regimes, it has promising importance in the implementation of morphing and adapting nosecone concepts.