Muhammad Umer Sohail

Institute of Space Technology, Pakistan.

Title: Spike Based Aerodynamic Shape Optimization Analysis of ICBM using Machine Learning and CFD Techniques

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Biography

Abstract

Aerodynamic shape optimization of hypersonic vehicles is crucial during the conceptual design stage. In the atmosphere, a spacecraft travels predominantly at supersonic speeds, generating a powerful bow shockwave around its blunt nose. This causes a high-pressure region near the front of the nose, escorted by high temperatures. It indicates a high risk of heat shield failure due to high-pressure drag. By lowering the high-pressure region on the blunt nose, an oblique shock and conical separated flow zone are formed by a forward disk-tip spike that significantly reduces the drag. In this study, various shape transformation methods are investigated of the aero-disk configuration of a hypersonic vehicle at Mach numbers 4-7. Aerodynamic forces and heating characteristics of the hypersonic ICBM spike-based aerodisk at different design conditions is analyzed computationally and through machine learning. Before doing a machine learning-based study, a thorough evaluation of the flow-field characteristics was carried out using CFD analysis. Such research is necessary to make the optimization findings trustworthy and to connect them to real-world physical events. The design goals are discovered to be conflicting in the sense that achieving one of them undermines the other. The Pareto optimum solutions are one of a variety of trade-off designs provided by the optimization approach, none of which is superior to the others. The final architecture's optimality is described using the current understanding of flow physics. The current study shows that the aero-disk spike configuration deteriorates the detached shock into a series of weak oblique shocks that slow down high-speed flow coming in contact with the fore-body. Machine learning-based prediction of certain geometric and aero-thermodynamic parameters proves to be an efficient and reliable framework for optimizing and predicting aero-thermodynamic parameters for various fore-body configurations.