Formulation, Realization, and Demonstration of a Process to Generate Aerodynamic Metamodels for Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle Design

The desire to facilitate the conceptual and preliminary de­ sign of hypersonic cruise vehicles has created the need for simple, fast, versatile, and trusted aerodynamic anal­ ysis tools. Metamodels representing physics-based en­ gineering codes provide instantaneous access to cali­ brated tools. Nonlinear transformations extend the capa­ bility of metamodels to accurately represent a large de­ sign space. Independence, superposition, and scaling properties of the hypersonic engineering method afford an expansive design space without traditional compound­ ing penalties. This one-time investment results in aerody­ namic and volumetric metamodels of superior quality and versatility which may be used in many forms throughout early design. As a module, they can be an integral com­ ponent within a multidisciplinary analysis and optimization package. Aerodynamic polars they produce may provide performance information for mission analysis. Spread­ sheet implementations can provide pocket-calculator-like access to explore the design space. Plotting their essence as profiles exposes design trends may be used in rapid tradeoff studies. This work postulates the procedure, de­ tails the execution, and exposes the results of generating uncompromised aerodynamic metamodels for hypersonic cruise vehicle design.