Preliminary Analysis of the Hexafly-International Vehicle

Airbreathing hypersonic flight is an ongoing challenge with the potential to cut air travel time and provide cheaper access to space. Waveriders are potential candidates for achieving hypersonic cruise speed or proper acceleration within the atmosphere. Current research tends to focus on key issues like flight mechanics, thermal loading, aero-elasticity, aerodynamic and aerothermodynamics at hypersonic speeds. Design problems in each of these areas must be solved if the design of a hypersonic waverider-like vehicle is to be viable. In this framework, the HEXAFLY-INT project aims at testing in free-flight conditions an innovative gliding vehicle with several breakthrough on-board technologies to be launched along a suborbital trajectory. Its preliminary conceptual design has been carried out by means of tools suitable to design vehicles to fly in hypersonic conditions. Aerodynamic and trajectory analyses have been carried out to assess mission capability as well. Once the aeroshape and the reference mission have been identified, system and sub-system analysis have been performed to close the system loop. The main results of the design analysis carried out during the preliminary phase of the study (such as vehicle aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics, re-entry trajectories, structures and mechanisms, and on the overall system, as well), are presented in this work.