2022 Publications

Co-Designing Hypersonic Vehicle Geometry and Trajectory

Published in: 23AFMC

To address the hypersonic vehicle design challenge of highly integrated subsystems and competing design requirements, a co-design approach is essential. This approach involves the design and optimisation of various system components in parallel across an entire mission trajectory, to obtain a vehicle configuration more optimal than any single trade study can produce. In this paper, a parameterised mock-up of the X-43A is used as a baseline vehicle in a developed co-design framework. By co-designing the vehicle geometry, parameterised as the vehicle’s mean density and scale for a maximum range glide problem, a 15% increase in performance was achieved. This increase in performance was attributed to the optimisation of the vehicle’s wing loading and lift-to-drag ratio to suit a skip-glide trajectory. This paper therefore demonstrates the capability of a co-design methodology to uncover the central performance-driving design features under the influence of subsystem interactions. This adds value to the preliminary design stage, highlighting underlying mission-critical design features.