Minimum drag and heating 0.3-caliber projectile nose geometry

Abstract

Understanding the performance of penetrators and aerodynamic bodies of revolution (missiles, rockets, aircraft noses, etc.) requires a close look at the drag and the heat transfer characteristics at a wide range of supersonic flight conditions. This research utilizes computational study and compares the aerothermal loads of supersonic flows around a new penetrator geometry, derived based on the optimization of the nose factor, to those of other common projectile shapes: conical, tangent-ogive, and power series nose geometries. The abundance of research on 0.3-caliber projectile made the choice for this research simple in order to maximize our ability to compare to the existing data. The comparison of our 0.3 caliber cylindrical projectile with other geometries shows that within the range of 500–1500 m/s flight speed the new geometry has the lowest aerodynamic drag, lowest body temperature, and least amount of heating.

Keywords

Nose factor penetration length aerothermal loads computational fluid dynamics aerodynamic drag

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