Aerodynamic Forces and Moments on a Cube Interacting with an Oblique Shock

In hypersonic flow, smaller bodies can stably surf along the bow shock of a primary body and accumulate a much larger lateral velocity than would otherwise be possible. For re-entry scenarios, lateral velocity can increase cross-field dispersion of debris fields. As a surrogate for this problem, we investigate the aerodynamic forces and moments on a cube interacting with an oblique shock. We choose a cube as an example of a generic space debris geometry and approach the problem numerically using computational fluid dynamics techniques. The free-stream Mach number $(M = 7)$ is kept constant, and the shock angle, shock depth and orientation are sampled using deterministic techniques to construct a large database of force and moment coefficients. LASSO regression is then used to develop reduced order models of the aerodynamics for all flight attitudes. A stability analysis of the cube-shock system is conducted and the dynamics are compared to a sphere.