Numerical investigation on the performance of combinational spike and transpiration cooling concept for nose cone under hypersonic conditions

Abstract Aiming at solving the thermal protection problems of the nose cone for hypersonic vehicles, a novel combinational spike and transpiration cooling concept is proposed in this paper. Although the temperature of the nose cone structure can be effectively reduced by traditional transpiration cooling, the cooling effect is not ideal due to the extremely high heat flux and pressure near the stagnation point. In the combinational configuration, the bow shock wave at the leading edge of the nose cone is pushed away by the spike, so that the pressure and heat flux along the nose cone surface are reduced obviously, and the cooling effect is also improved significantly. The flow field generated by this innovative concept has been thoroughly examined through numerical simulations employing the compressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations in conjunction with the shear stress transport (SST) k - ω turbulence model. The fluid-thermal interaction is considered by using the conjugate heat transfer approach. The performance of three configurations based on the nose cone are numerically investigated, including transpiration cooling, spike, combinational spike and transpiration cooling. The numerical results show that, compared with the traditional transpiration cooling, the temperature at the stagnation point of the nose cone for the combinational configuration is reduced by about 64%, which proves the feasibility and high efficiency of the novel combinational concept. With the increase of coolant mass flow, the temperature along the nose cone surface for combinational configuration decreases, while the magnitude of the temperature reduction decreases. Therefore, under certain incoming flow conditions, the appropriate coolant mass flow should be considered to achieve better thermal protection effect.