Method of Investigation for Numerical Simulation on Aero-Optical Effect Based on WCNS-E-5

Abstract

Profound importance has been attached to aero-optical effects on distortion of optical signals and image aberration for imaging guidance aircraft to eliminate such detrimental impact with respect to the disciplinary intersection of fluid dynamics and optical engineering. Even though numerical simulation has become an irreplaceable technique in this field, few attempts focusing on method validation are reported, despite the widely existing simulative studies. Because of the urgent demand of such a validation task, the authors conduct a rigorous discussion on the effectiveness of a combinational WCNS-E-5 and ray-tracing method in aero-optical simulation. In section order, oblique shock wave, three-dimensional supersonic mixing layer, and subsonic commingled flow are employed for comparison with theoretical results, grid sensitivity analysis, and experimental data validation, respectively. Results suggest that grid independence of aero-optical parameters still holds, and reasonably prescribed inflow conditions may realize little difference between simulated optical path difference rms and measured data from the wind-tunnel test.