Range Improvements in Gliding Reentry Vehicles from Thrust Capability

摘要

There are diverse applications in which control of a gliding hypersonic reentry vehicle is needed. Recently, it has become feasible to predict the maximum reachable footprint a vehicle can achieve given a span of boundary conditions and constraints. This capability is being newly incorporated into the vehicle design process. The present work demonstrates a method to quickly approximate a footprint area and how such predictions can be informative to design considerations and trajectory planning. The novel design feature investigated is the presence, or absence, of an engine thrusting axially along the vehicle body. Three pairs of notional vehicles, one designed with an engine and one without, are motivated. Reachable footprint dimensions are presented for each and compared over the constraint space and engine design. It is shown that the performance increase, due to the presence of an engine, is most dramatically seen in a situation where a reentry vehicle must divert from a preplanned trajectory. In such a scenario, as time to target decreases, the ratio of reachable footprint area of a vehicle with an engine to that without significantly increases. This insight demonstrates new trade space analysis to inform vehicle design.