Abstract:
The Model flight (MF-1) program, which was a hypersonic flight experiment program executed by the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center (CARDC), was launched successfully on December 30, 2015 at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. MF-1 was the first model flight experiment which was aimed at studying fundamental science problems in hypersonic boundary-layer in China. The main objective of MF-1 was to investigate laminar-turbulent boundary-layer transition on a 7-degree half-angle cone surface with nose bluntness of 5.0 mm radius configuration at zero angle-of-attack. The maximum Mach of flight was 5.3 and the maximum altitude was 63.4 km. The angle-of-attack during the flight window was under 0.5 degree during ascent phase and under 5 degree during descent phase, which met the design goal. The temperature on cone surface was measured with 50 temperature transducers by thin-wall temperature measurement technique which was widely used in wind-tunnel experiments. The heat flux data were given by the three-dimensional thermal identification method to discriminate transition zone. The preliminary analysis shows that the flight experiment results are reliable and can be used to validate the transition predicting model and software. The results shows that the existing model is able to predict the start location of the transition on the cone at a small angle-of-attack for supersonic or hypersonic flow. The difference between the critical height of the laminar-turbulence re-laminar in the ascending phase and turbulence-laminar transition in the descending phase are observed. Finally, the flight result shows that the forward facing step of about 0.2 mm may induce Bypass transition.