Application of Aerospike to Hypersonic Vehicle: The Scientific Flight Test of China's First Commercial Rocket

摘要

The first commercial rocket OS-XO was launched in May 17, 2018. The main goal of the OS-X series rockets is to provide a low-cost and high-efficiency platform for the performance testing of hypersonic vehicle to gather fundamental scientific data which is difficult or impossible to obtain via ground testing alone. A solid rocket engine named XGF-01 was independently designed, and successfully tested in December 22, 2017. The payload is composed of a universal hypersonic vehicle head with an aerospike. The purpose is to investigate the performance of passive flow-control of the aerospike in hypersonic flow. The geometric shape of the aerospike determines the size of the low pressure recirculation zone of the head. As the drag reduction effect of aerospike in the supersonic flow has been verified in flight tests abroad, the aerospike could achieve maximum drag reduction of 35% for the head in hypersonic flow. The scientific research of OS-XO focuses on heat flux reduction and sonic-boom mitigation. The flight test results show that the aerospike could achieve a maximum reduction of 42% for the heat flux of head in hypersonic flow, which will greatly improve the flight performance of hypersonic vehicle because of a good thermal environment. When the rocket flies in the near space with a hypersonic speed, the sonic boom intensity is between 136-120 decibels. During the burning stage, the sonic boom characteristics of the supersonic vehicle can be predicted by the numerical simulations of two states which include engine power on and power off, covering the sonic boom value of the flight test. The flight test results can be helpful to support the engineering application of hypersonic vehicles in the future, breaking through the key technologies, improving commercialization and developing core technology for long-range high-speed aircraft.