| The X-33 vehicle, a lifting body with short canted fins and aerospike rocket engines, is intended to demonstrate the feasibility of commercial reusable launch vehicles.; As one component of the design loads on vehicle components, the pressure distribution on the surface of the vehicle at certain critical trajectory points needed to be determined. Due to the rapid design and development cycle of the program, wind tunnel testing at load critical trajectory point flow conditions was not conducted. Therefore, CFD has been relied upon to determine the surface pressures at these trajectory points. In this study, Euler computation of the flow parameters was conducted. Computed results compared favorably with wind tunnel data for most points on the windward surfaces of the vehicle. In certain cases, the Euler solver was unable to capture small areas of flow separation seen in wind tunnel results. |
