NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND TRANSONIC WIND TUNNEL RESULTS FOR THE INTERSTAGE REGION OF THE SONDA III SOUNDING ROCKET FLIGHT

Eduardo Jourdan de Araújo Jorge Filho¹; Edson Basso¹; João Luiz F. Azevedo¹; Maria Luísa Collucci da Costa Reis¹; João Batista Pessoa Falcão Filho¹

¹ Instituto de Aeronáutica e Espaço (IAE)

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-2739

Resumo

This paper investigates the flowfield around the SONDA III sounding rocket. The first-stage of the vehicle consists of a solid-rocket motor with almost twice the diameter of the second stage. This characteristic requires the placement of a frustum to couple the two stages. Fins are attached to the same region of the vehicle to stabilize the second-stage flight, resulting in a geometrically complex configuration. This constructive characteristic creates flow disturbances around the vehicle in the transonic regime, which requires experimental and numerical investigation. For numerical simulation, complex meshes are necessary and convergence difficulties are expected. A test campaign was carried out at the Transonic Wind Tunnel (TTP) of the Institute of Aeronautics and Space (IAE) to study the aerodynamic phenomena in the inter-stage region on a half-model, scale 1:8, installed on the side wall of the test section. The model has pressure tap outputs for surface pressure imprint applied to the model. The flow conditions investigated in the experimental tests encompass Mach numbers from 0.1 to 1.1. A commercial solver is used for the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes numerical simulations. This paper compares results from both numerical and experimental approaches.

Palavras-chave: Transonic Flow; Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD); Sonda III Sounding Rocket