CFD Analysis of a Supersonic Projectile with Deflectable Nose Control

A computational investigation of the aerodynamic characteristics of a supersonic projectile with a deflectable nose control at a Mach number of 3.0 has been completed. The deflectable nose provides aerodynamic control by angular rotation of the forebody in the pitch plane. Computations have been performed for body incidences up to 10 degrees with nose deflections in the pitch plane of up to 8 degrees. The predicted overall forces and moments are compared with wind tunnel measurements and good agreement is observed for the computed normal forces and pitching moments. The predicted axial forces are consistently less than observed in the experiment. The computational results are also presented in terms of control effectiveness and loading distributions and efforts are made to understand the control mechanism. The study suggests that deflectable nose control is very effective, particularly at small incidence angles and has surprisingly little effect on downstream lifting surfaces.