CFD in Hypersonic Flight

This is a short review of how CFD contributed to hypersonic flights in the past 50 years. Two unexpected phenomena that occurred in the entry flights of the Apollo and Space Shuttle made us aware of the impact of the high temperature real-gas effects on hypersonic flights: pitching moment anomaly of up to 4 degrees, and radiation overshoot behind a shock wave. The so-called two-temperature nonequilibrium model was introduced to explain these phenomena. CFD techniques were developed to accommodate the two-temperature model. Presently, CFD can predict trim angle of attack to an accuracy of about 1 degree. A concerted effort was made to numerically reproduce the experimentally measured flow-field over a double-cone. As yet, perfect agreement between the experimental data and computation is not achieved. Scramjet technology development is disappointingly slow. The phenomenon of ablation during planetary entries is not yet predicted satisfactorily. In the future, one expects to see more research carried out on planetary entries and space tourism.