Date of Award

6-1994

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Astronautical Engineering

Department

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

First Advisor

Paul I. King, PhD

Abstract

In the present research, the flow field associated with the ejection of a crew capsule from the fuselage of a high speed generic aircraft was experimentally investigated by means of the modified gas hydraulic analogy. For this, an existing hydraulic simulator was calibrated and modified to adapt it to the needs of the experiment. The analogy was evaluated for a five-sided capsule alone, and good quantitative agreement with the 2-D shock-expansion theory was obtained. It was found that the size of the model played a key role in the determination of good quantitative data. The analysis of the capsule interacting with a fuselage was made considering it at fixed vertical positions from the fuselage and moving with respect to the fuselage at different constant speeds. A clear difference in water depth ratio distribution on the surfaces of the capsule was found between the static and dynamic conditions and also differences occurred for the various velocities of separation. The agreement between theory and experiment was fair. It was concluded that larger models are needed to get good quantitative agreement between theory and experiment and that any separation study should be made applying a dynamical model.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GA-ENY-94J-1

DTIC Accession Number

ADA280632

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