Studies on caret wings at super orbital speeds

This paper reports an experimental study on the effect of high enthalpy flows on the aerodynamics of caret wings. The experiments were conducted in the super orbital expansion tunnel X3 at an equivalent flight of 9,25 Km/s. Mach number of 11.5. Reynolds number of 80000 and enthalpy of 43 MJ/Kg. An external three component stress wave balance was used for measuring the forces and moments on a caret wing which had a design Mach number of 8 which was production of a configuration used at lower enthalpy (Kipke). Due to the low Reynolds no. of the flow, a detached shock is observed instead of the attached shock with subsequent inboard shocks. Because of this, there is a considerable loss in the high pressure on the wind ward side and this results in a lower magnitude of lift pitching moment, L/D and higher drag. In contrast to this, Kipke had an attached shock and hence more lift, L/D, pitching moment and less drag for the same configuration at Mach no. of 10.9 and Re. No of 0 56 million. The data will be very useful for assessing waveriders at real conditions and for evaluation of CFD models