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Procedia Engineering 99 (2015) 428 – 432

“APISAT2014”, 2014 Asia-Pacific International Symposium on Aerospace Technology,

APISAT2014

Effects of Nose and Corner Radius on Heat Transfer Rates over

Axisymmetric Blunt Body
Zhang Liang*,Chen Zhi ,Gong Jian ,Zhang Xuejun
China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, Beijing 100074, China

Abstract

Blunt nose body with sharp corner is a kind of common configuration for spaceship design. However, for its complexity, there
were few valid theories can solve this problem perfectly. In this paper, compressible nonsimilar boundary-layer analysis and
numerical simulation of Navier-Stokes equations were used together to give some satisfactory results. The influence of nose
radius and corner radius on heating rate over blunt body was also summarized which is very useful for the optimization of
thermal protection system.
©©2015
2014TheThe Authors.
Authors. Published
Published by Elsevier
by Elsevier Ltd.
Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Peer-review under responsibility of Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics (CSAA).
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics (CSAA)
Keywords: Heat Transfer Rates ; Nose Radius ; Corner Radius ; Axisymmetric ; Blunt Body

1. Introduction

Blunt nose body with sharp corner is a kind of common configuration for spaceship design. On one hand, the
reentry capsule usually takes this kind of configuration to dramatically reduce heat transfer rates. On the other hand,
lots of material sample for thermal test is also of such configuration. So it is important to get accurate heat transfer
rates on this kind of configuration for thermal protection system design of spaceship.
However, for its complexity, there were few works have done to solve this kind of problem. The famous Fay-
Riddle expression[1] gives the heating rate of stagnation-point, leaving the velocity gradient to be specified alone.
But for this kind of configuration, to get velocity gradient itself is a difficult work. Zoby, et al. has summarized the

* Corresponding author. Tel.:+86-010-68743181; fax:+86-010-68374758.

E-mail address: zinsser_1982@163.com

1877-7058 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics (CSAA)
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2014.12.557
 Zhang Liang et al. / Procedia Engineering 99 (2015) 428 – 432 429

effects of corner radius on such velocity gradient[2], but the work was based on the experiment data which were very
limited. Lees and Zoby, et al. have developed different integral expressions for general axisymmetric flow under the
assumption of “local similarity” of compressible boundary layer[3][4]. Unfortunately, as will be seen soon, this
assumption is generally not satisfied within corner region, where the heating rate usually larger than stagnation-point
heating. Boundary-layer analysis is another valid method to solve this kind of problem. Take “nonsimilarity” into
account, this method can give accurate heat transfer rates distribution. The drawback of this method is that the
parameters at edge of boundary layer cannot be easily specified. Compared with all the methods above, numerical
simulation of Navier-Stokes equations is a kind of more accurate method. However, there are kinds of influence
factors ,such as mesh distributionǃnumerical schemeǃlimiter etc, making it difficult to give satisfactory heating
rate over blunt nose body. It is still a challenge and usually needs rich experience to get reasonable result.
In this paper, compressible nonsimilar boundary-layer analysis and numerical simulation of Navier-Stokes
equations were used together to investigate the heat transfer rates over axisymmetric blunt body, engineering
correlations developed by Lees and Zoby were also used to give additional comparison.

2. Numerical Algorithm

2.1. Navier-Stokes Solver

The governing equations are the time-dependent three-dimension compressible RANS equations:
wQ wF wG wH wFv wGv wH v
    
wt wx wy wz wx wy wz
where, Q is conserved state vector ˗ F ˈ G ˈ H are inviscid flux vectors˗ Fv ˈ Gv ˈ H v are viscous flux
vectors.
The flow solver is an implicit, upwind-differencing algorithm in which the inviscid fluxes are obtained on the
faces of each control volume using the scheme of Roe[5]. For the current scheme, MUSCL method and the mimmod
limiter is used to reach second order spatial accuracy. The viscous terms are evaluated with a central-difference-type
formulation. The solution at each time step is updated using the linearized backward-Euler, time differencing
scheme. At each time step, the linear system of equations is approximately solved with the LU-SGS procedure[6].

2.2. Boundary-Layer Solver

The governing equations are steady axisymmetric compressible boundary layer equations:
2[ due ª U º § wf c wf ·
(Cf cc)c  ff cc « ( f c)2  e »  2[ ¨ f c  f cc ¸
ue d[ ¬ U¼ © w[ w[ ¹
wp
0
wK

§ C c ·c ue 2 § wg wf ·
¨ g ¸  fg c C ( f cc) 2  2[ ¨ f c  gc ¸
© Pr ¹ he © w[ w[ ¹
The definition of each term in above equations can be found in [7] in detail. The self-similar solution of
stagnation-point was first computed as the initial boundary. Then finite difference method was used to get the whole
solution in a downstream-marching manner. The input pressure distribution at the edge of boundary layer is supplied
with Euler equations solver, which is thought to be accurate enough. Other parameters, such as velocity, temperature,
can be obtained under the assumption of isentropic condition along the streamline.

3. Result Analysis

Sketch of typical blunt body is given in figure 1, where Rb, Rn, Rc is body radius, nose radius and corner radius, s
430 Zhang Liang et al. / Procedia Engineering 99 (2015) 428 – 432

is the distance measured along the surface from stagnation-point. Test cases investigated included a range of Rb/Rn
from 0.1 to 0.9 and Rc /Rn from 0.1 to 0.4. Test condition is: Mach number is 8.0, Reynolds number based on body
radius is 1.0×106, freestream temperature is 240K, and cold wall temperature is fixed to 300K.

Fig. 1. sketch of typical blunt body.

Figure2 shows the varying of heat transfer rates along body surface with different corner radius and nose radius.
Boundary-Layer solver and Navier-Stokes solver agree well with each other. The only slight difference within
stagnation-point region is due to the sensitivity of Boundary-Layer solver to the velocity at the edge of boundary
layer which is very small near stagnation-point and difficult to get the exact value.
At stagnation-point, either decreasing nose radius or increasing corner radius can increase stagnation-point
heating rate. This phenomenon was also studied in [2]. With blunt nose(small Rb/Rn), nose radius and corner radius
both have influence on stagnation-point heating, while nose radius is the major factor. When nose is sharper (Rb/Rn
increases), the influence of corner radius becomes negligible. The critical value was given as 0.5 in [2]. The more
accurate value is depends on the position of sonic line which has relationship with freestream.

(a) Rc / Rb=0.1, Rb / Rn=0.1 (b) Rc / Rb=0.2, Rb / Rn=0.1 (c) Rc / Rb=0.3, Rb / Rn=0.1 (d) Rc / Rb=0.4, Rb / Rn=0.1

(e) Rc / Rb=0.1, Rb / Rn=0.3 (f) Rc / Rb=0.2, Rb / Rn=0.3 (g) Rc / Rb=0.3, Rb / Rn=0.3 (h) Rc / Rb=0.4, Rb / Rn=0.3

(i) Rc / Rb=0.1, Rb / Rn=0.5 (j) Rc / Rb=0.2, Rb / Rn=0.5 (k) Rc / Rb=0.3, Rb / Rn=0.5 (l) Rc / Rb=0.4, Rb / Rn=0.5
 Zhang Liang et al. / Procedia Engineering 99 (2015) 428 – 432 431

(m) Rc / Rb=0.1, Rb / Rn=0.7 (n) Rc / Rb=0.2, Rb / Rn=0.7 (o) Rc / Rb=0.3, Rb / Rn=0.7 (p) Rc / Rb=0.4, Rb / Rn=0.7

(q) Rc / Rb=0.1, Rb / Rn=0.9 (r) Rc / Rb=0.2, Rb / Rn=0.9 (s) Rc / Rb=0.3, Rb / Rn=0.9 (t) Rc / Rb=0.4, Rb / Rn=0.9

Fig. 2.heat transfer rates along body surface with different corner radius and nose radius

In corner region, nose radius mainly affects the peak heating value while corner radius has important influence on
the profile of heating rate. Decreasing nose radius will make the corner heating decreased dramatically while
decreasing corner radius will mainly sharper the heating profile and slightly increase local peak heating.
Nose and corner radius affect the heating distribution all over the body, but different region has different flow
mechanism. In stagnation-point region, flow is self-similar. When freestream condition and cold wall temperature is
fixed, the heating rate only depends on local velocity gradient which is only sensitive to the nose radius and corner
radius (if corner is within subsonic region). However, because of the rapid expansion and large pressure gradient,
flow is nonsimilar within corner region, see figure 3, heating rate depends on not only local flow, upstream flow also
has significant influence. For such nonsimilar flow, theory analysis is difficult to give accurate prediction.

Fig. 3.boundar-layer profile acorss corner region (Rc/Rb=0.1 , Rb/Rn=0.5)

Two kinds of engineering correlations developed by Zoby and Lees are adopted here to make comparison, see
figure 4.
Zoby’s correnlation:
s
U P 0.664[ ³ U * P *ue r 2k ds]1/ 2
q 0.22( Reθ ) 1 ( )( ) U u (h  h )(Prw ) 0.6 , T 0
U e Pe e e r w Ue ue r k
432 Zhang Liang et al. / Procedia Engineering 99 (2015) 428 – 432

Lees’s correnlation:
q 1/ 2  pe / ps  ue / uf  r k u
1
qs s
³ p e / ps  ue / uf  r 2k d s 1/ uf  due / ds s
0

The definition of each terms in above correlations can be found in [3][4] in detail.
Two kinds of correlations agree with each other very well. Compared with boundary-layer solver and Navier-
Stokes solver, similar prediction results are obtained after corner region. There is certain difference within nose
region, but the difference is not so large. However, both of the two correlations cannot capture local peak heating
within corner region. So it is inappropriate to use above method to predict corner heating.

Fig. 4.engineering correlations prediction results (Rc/Rb=0.1 , Rb/Rn=0.5)

4. Conclusion

Heat transfer rates over axisymmetric blunt body with different nose and corner radiuses were investigated. The
conclusion is as follows:
x Decreasing nose radius or increasing corner radius can increase stagnation-point velocity gradient and thus
increase the stagnation-point heating rate.
x Decreasing nose radius will decrease corner peak heating rate dramatically while decreasing corner radius
will mainly sharper the corner heating profile and slightly increase corner peak heating.
x Flow is nonsimilar within corner region. The engineering correlations based on “local similar” assumption
cannot capture local peak heating accurately.
The study present here is limited to laminar flow with medium Reynolds number, the flow with extremely low
and high Reynolds number needs further investigation.

References

[1]Fay J. A. and Riddell F. R. Theory of Stagnation point Heat Transfer in Dissociated Air, J. Aeronaut. Sci. ,1958,25(2):73-85,121
[2]Ernest V. Zoby and Edward M. Sullivan. Effects of corner radius on stagnation-point velocity gradients on blunt axsymmetric bodies, NASA-
TM-X1067,1966.
[3]Zoby E.V., Moss J.N., Sutton K., Approximate convective heating equations for hypersonic flows, Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, 1981,
18(1), 64-70
[4]Lees Lester. Laminar Heat Transfer Over Blunt-Nosed Bodies at Hypersonic Flight Speeds, Jet Propulsion,1956,26(4):221-282.
[5]Roe P L. Approximate Riemann Solver, Parameter Vectors and Differences Schemes, Journal of Computational Physics, 1981, 43: 357-372
[6]Yoon S, Jameson A. Lower-upper symmetric Gauss-Sediel method for the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations, AIAA
Journal,1988,26(9):1025-1026.
[7]J. D. Anderson. Hypersonic and High Temperature Gas Dynamics.Virginia:AIAA,2006:283.