Experimental Flowfield Measurements of a Nose Cavity Configuration

A wind tunnel test was conducted to experimentally investigate the fluid flow phenomena that resulted when a nose cavity configuration was introduced into a hypersonic environment. This experiment served two purposes: First, to study the nature of the bow shock and anticipated reduced thermal characteristics and uniform pressures at the cavity base, and second, to verify analytical predictions that were performed on this concept prior to the test.

The results indicate that the bow shock would oscillate with low amplitude at the acoustic frequency of the cavity. The heat transfer rate at the cavity base was reduced compared to the rim of the nose. Correlations of the wind tunnel results were made with computational analysis and previous wind tunnel results.