Abstract When high-speed vehicles perform long-duration gliding or maneuvering flights, extreme aerothermodynamic conditions (high Mach numbers and temperatures) give rise to the multi-physics effects, including thermochemical nonequilibrium effects and rarefied gas effects. These coupled physical phenomena significantly influence the aerodynamic characteristics of the vehicle. This study employs the National Numerical Wind Tunnel software, named NNW-HyFLOW, by solving the chemically non-equilibrium unsteady Navier-Stokes equations with rarefied slip boundary conditions. The analyses are performed to investigate the static and dynamic stability characteristics of a blunt cone model under Mach number of 26.6 at the altitude of 85.7 km. Preliminary results indicate that both the predicted static and dynamic derivatives of multi-physics effects increase significantly. The static derivative increases by 70%, while the dynamic derivative increases by 160%, relative to the predictions of the calorically perfect gas model.
Wang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.