Design and Analysis of Secondary Spike on Blunt Head

The present paper investigates the heat flux and drag reduction techniques on a hypersonic re-entry vehicle. Many researchers have reported a reduction in these parameters by the introduction of an aero spike at the stagnation point of the blunt head of a re-entry vehicle. The effect of introducing a secondary surface (called the secondary spike), along with the aero spike, on the blunt head is discussed in this work. The study has been carried out by varying the location of the secondary spike with respect to the axis of the vehicle for a set of free stream conditions. Also, the effect of variation in free stream conditions on a re-entry vehicle with a primary and secondary spike has been investigated. It has been observed that some configurations work well for some free stream conditions but fail in comparison to a single spiked body for some other conditions.