Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of a Mortar Bomb Separation from a Fixed-Wing Aircraft

Predicting store separation characteristics of a store before flight testing phase is important to prevent from catastrophic accidents. Wind tunnel tests and computational fluid dynamics analyses could be performed to predict separation characteristics. In this paper, unsteady Reynold’s averaged Navier-Stokes equations with moving grid are solved by using a commercial software to predict separation of a mortar bomb released from a fixed-wing aircraft. Analyses are performed for release from different flight conditions considering mission profile. Methodology details and results of the analyses are presented in the paper. According to the results, separation safeness is determined for flight conditions, and flight test is performed at the defined flight condition. Using fast camera images, computational fluid dynamics analyses are compared with the flight test in terms of store behavior and separation safeness, and results are also presented.