Numerical study of hypersonic missiles with lattice wings using an actuator disk

Abstract

A missile with lattice wings is numerically investigated. In order to reduce drastically the computational cost for such a geometry the actuator disk technique is used. Therefore, lattice wings are replaced by artificial boundary conditions. At the actuator disk location, the forces involved by the grid fin are interpolated from an experimental database. Firstly, in order to validate the methodology this technique has been applied to an isolated grid fin and the numerical results have been compared with experiments. Then, the actuator disk has been coupled with a body to investigate a complete missile. The configuration has been computed for different Mach numbers and angles of attack and the predictions of forces and moments compared against experimental data. This validated the method and showed its potential for vehicle design.