Numerical Examination of Shock Generator Geometries and Nozzle Plume Effects on Pressure Signature

The NASA Advanced Air Vehicles Program, Commercial Supersonics Technology Project seeks to advance tools and techniques to make over-land supersonic flight feasible. In this study, preliminary computational results are presented for future tests in the NASA Ames 9’ x 7’ supersonic wind tunnel to be conducted in early 2016. Shock-plume interactions and their effect on pressure signature are examined for six model geometries. Near-field pressure signatures are assessed using the CFD code USM3D to model the proposed test geometries in free-air. Additionally, results obtained using the commercial grid generation software Pointwise R © are compared to results using VGRID, the NASA Langley Research Center in-house mesh generation program.