Analysis of Shroud Release Applied for High-Velocity Missiles

Abstract

A detachable missile nose was designed, tested, and implemented in a new missile. This design enables the use of low-drag supersonic configurations for the major part of the flight, with the application of blunt seekers that are active during the end game. The configuration of the ejected shroud was designed using a novel approach, which included only a small amount of wind-tunnel experiments, coupled with an aerodynamic model produced by computational fluid dynamics. A simulation of flow dynamics, coupled with rigid-body dynamics, was developed and tested. Databases of aerodynamic forces and moments were produced using quasi-steady computations, for hinged and free flight of the shroud, at very demanding conditions of supersonic flight and large angles of attack. These databases were used by rigid-body dynamic simulations, in one- and six-degree-of-freedom modes, in order to predict the shroud’s trajectories. Very good agreement with experimental data has been achieved. The present methodology enabled the analysis of hundreds of trajectories at a reasonable computation effort.