Launcher Aerodynamics: A Suitable Investigation Approach at Phase-A Design Level

This chapter deals with launcher aerodynamic design activities at phase-A level. The goal is to address the preliminary aerodynamic database of a typical launch vehicle configuration as input for launcher performances evaluations, control, sizing, and staging design activities. In this framework, different design approaches relying on both engineering and numerical methods are considered. Indeed, engineering-based aerodynamic analyses by means of a three-dimensional panel methods code, based on local surface inclination theory, were performed. Then, accuracy of design analysis increased using steady-state computational fluid dynamics with both Euler and Navier-Stokes approximations

Parametric Integral Soft Objects-based Procedure for Thermal Protection System Modeling of Reusable Launch Vehicle

The present paper deals with a modeling procedure of a thermal protection system (TPS) designed for a conceptual reusable launch vehicle (RLV). A novel parametric model based on a scalar field created by a set of soft object primitives is used to assign an almost arbitrary seamless distribution of insulating materials over the vehicle surface. Macroaggregates of soft objects are created using suitable geometric supports allowing a distribution of coating materials using a limited number of parameters. Applications to different conceptual vehicle configurations of an assigned thickness map and materials layout show the flexibility of the model

Fourier-Mukai and autoduality for compactified Jacobians. I

To every singular reduced projective curve X one can associate, following E. Esteves, many fine compactified Jacobians, depending on the choice of a polarization on X, each of which yields a modular compactification of a disjoint union of the generalized Jacobian of X. We prove that, for a reduced curve with locally planar singularities, the integral (or Fourier-Mukai) transform with kernel the Poincare' sheaf from the derived category of the generalized Jacobian of X to the derived category of any fine compactified Jacobian of X is fully faithful, generalizing a previous result of D. Arinkin in the case of integral curves. As a consequence, we prove that there is a canonical isomorphism (called autoduality) between the generalized Jacobian of X and the connected component of the identity of the Picard scheme of any fine compactified Jacobian of X and that algebraic equivalence and numerical equivalence coincide on any fine compactified Jacobian, generalizing previous results of Arinkin, Esteves, Gagne', Kleiman, Rocha, Sawon. The paper contains an Appendix in which we explain how our work can be interpreted in view of the Langlands duality for the Higgs bundles as proposed by Donagi-Pantev.Comment: 46 pages; final version, to appear in Crell