X-34 Experimental Aeroheating at Mach 6 and 10

Critical technologies are being developed to support the goals of the NASA Office of Aeronautics and Space Transportation Technology Access to Space initiative for next-generation reusable space transportation systems. From the perspective of aerothermodynamic performance throughout the flight trajectory, the reusable launch vehicle program incorporates conceptual analysis, ground-based testing, and computational fluid dynamics to provide flyable suborbital flight demonstrator vehicles. An overview is provided of the hypersonic aeroheating wind tunnel test program conducted at the NASA Langley Research Center in support of one of these vehicles, the X-34 small reusable technology demonstrator program. Global surface heat transfer images, surface streamline patterns, and shock shapes were measured on 0.0153- and 0.0183-scale models of proposed X-34 flight vehicles at Mach 6 and 10 in air. The primary parametrics that were investigated include angles of attack from 0 to 35 deg and freestream unit Reynolds numbers from 0.5 x 10 super(6) to 8 x 10 super(6)/ft (which was sufficient to produce laminar, transitional, and turbulent heating data), both with and without control-surface deflections. Comparisons of the experimental data to computational predictions are included, along with a discussion of the implications of some of the experimental flow features for the flight vehicle.