Analysis of Subsonic/Hypersonic Aerodynamics of High-Speed Aircrafts

Dear Colleagues,

The new frontier of transportation is represented by reliable, efficient, and affordable high-speed aircraft. Although great progress and successes have been accomplished in this field, flying at supersonic/hypersonic speeds is still extremely challenging from several aerospace engineering points of views. Indeed, in order to achieve the goal of high-speed transportation, several design issues must be addressed, especially vehicle aerothermodynamics, aerodynamic heating, flight mechanics, guidance navigation and control, scramjet propulsion integration, and thermal management. In addition, high-speed aircraft, even if optimized to fly at a very high Mach number, must also be able to exhibit rather good aerodynamic performance at low-speed conditions in order to land on conventional runways. Therefore, aircraft configurations must be designed with particular care.

In this framework, the aim of this Special Issue is to allow researchers and engineers to collect valuable works that focus on high-speed aircraft, specifically on the design of vehicle aeroshape, vehicle aerothermodynamics, vehicle aerodynamics, and multidisciplinary design optimization. For instance, the extreme aerothermal loading environment expected for such aircraft necessitates the design of advanced aeroshapes that can sustain large heat transfer and mechanical loading conditions while providing aerodynamic lift to sustain flight and the lowest possible drag to increase performance. Therefore, this Special Issue intends to explore all the disciplines and design goals, which represent research topics, and/or overviews of the program development of several research centers and industries all over the world. We welcome research works related to high-speed (e.g., supersonic and hypersonic) aircraft aerothermodynamic designs, especially those related to the following:

• Aeroshape design;
• Computational fluid dynamics;
• Hypersonics;
• Conjugate heat transfer problem;
• Thermo-chemical non-equilibrium;
• Radiative heat transfer;
• Catalyticity;
• Fluid–structure interaction;
• Heat transfer;
• Wind tunnel test;
• Numerical rebuilding of experimental test campaign;
• Vehicle aerothermodynamics;
• Aerothermodynamic database modeling;
• Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO);
• High-speed flows;
• Scramjet propulsion;
• In-flight experimentation;
• Extrapolation to flight;
• Viscous interaction.

Therefore, this Special Issue delves into the aeroshape design of advanced configurations that will allow high-speed vehicles to be faster, quieter, and more economical than before.

Furthermore, high-speed flow issues and the challenges associated with achieving affordable high-speed travel will also be discussed.

Achieving the above-mentioned goals will make the possibility of high-speed air travel a reality.

Dr. Giuseppe Pezzella
Guest Editor

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