SBIR-STTR Award

An existing hypersonic vehicle design code predicts EISP performance increases of 200-400 seconds over traditional single-stage-to-orbit configurations. If realized, such increase may have profound effects on the vehicle weight and maximum airbreathing Mach number. To date, these improved results have only been obtained for vehicles at a specified design point, and no off-design analysis has been performed. The work suggested in this proposal takes the first steps toward assessing the feasibility of creating an off-design performance tool that is appropriate for conceptual design applications. As such, this tool should be capable of producing reasonable accuracy at a relatively high rate of computational speed. In addition, the suggested work also examines the feasibility of implementing the required variable geometry into the types of vehicle configurations that are created by the existing design code. Ideals and concepts for handling variable geometry considerations of a wide range of configurations will be proposed.

An existing hypersonic vehicle design code predicts EISP performance increases of 200-400 seconds over traditional single-stage-to-orbit configurations. If realized, such increases may have profound effects on the vehicle weight and maximum air-breathing Mach number. In turn, these factors could greatly reduce the cost of development and operation of an SSTO vehicle. To date, these improved results have only been obtained for complete vehicles at a specified design point, but there is a need to determine the off-design performance of the proposed configurations. Phase I illustrated that hypersonic off-design performance can be estimated efficiently for the entire range of inlet geometries that are generated by the design code. Phase II will utilize the concepts developed during Phase I to create an off-design analysis code for complete vehicle configurations. The end result of the Phase II effort will provide a complete vehicle design and analysis system when combined with the existing vehicle design code. This system will be able to design configurations, analyze performance, and size vehicles for any proposed SSTO mission. The speed afforded by the system will allow design optimizations and parametric studies to be performed.