NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF LATERAL CONTROL JETS OF AN INTERCEPTOR MISSILE

Sumit Krishnan, A.K. Jouhari, R. Balu

Abstract: The interceptor missile is an anti-ballistic missile designed to counter the ballistic missiles like Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles launched from any country. These missiles use side jets from their surface in order to target towards the ballistic missiles. The analysis of this side jet in the presence of free stream flow and its impact on the missile itself is of great importance. Since the jet comprises of chemically reactive species, it is essential to know the amount of attenuation of the radio signals passing through them. In the past few years many experiments and theoretical studies have been carried out to characterize the jet-atmosphere interaction in wind tunnel but it is difficult to scale these results to flight conditions because of free stream/plume chemistry, Reynolds number, surface, and wall interference effects. Therefore, it is necessary for computational studies to supplement the experimental efforts and explore the physics involved to obtain the performance characteristics and flow field structure of jet/atmospheric interaction. The objective of the present study is to simulate this lateral control jet and its effect due to presence of main free stream flow. The spherically blunted ogive shaped cylindrical body is used here as a typical shape representing the interceptor missile. The simulation is done using the CFD software package AnsysFluent (V15) at the given conditions of altitude 30 km and Mach 3, with and without jet & finally the results are compared

Keywords: Interceptor Missile, RCS (Reaction Control System), Lateral Jet, Supersonic-flow, Free-stream, Plume, Aerodynamics, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2016.0504036