Computation of High-Speed Inviscid Flows about Real Configurations

Abstract

A numerical procedure for computing the three-dimensional inviscid flow about complex geometries is described. A second-order accurate finite-difference marching technique is used to integrate Euler's equations. ^Analytic conformal mappings are employed to develop a computational grid. All shocks in the flow field are treated explicitly as discontinuities satisfying the Rankine-Hugoniot jump conditions. Computational difficulties associated with blunt-nose entropy layers are avoided by explicitly following a stream surface located at the layer's outer edge and disallowing numerical derivatives of certain flow variables across this surface. Equilibrium air thermodynamics are included using curve fits of Mollier charts. A computer code which utilizes these computational procedures and a geometry package which simplifies the description of complex vehicles have been developed. This code has been used extensively to com-, pute flow fields about a variety of complex vehicles and results are presented herein. Agreement with experimental data is shown to be good.