In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that is highly supersonic. Since the 1970s, the term has generally been assumed to refer to speeds of Mach 5 (5 times the speed of sound) and above. The hypersonic regime is a subset of the supersonic regime.
The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed is elusive, especially since physical changes in the airflow (molecular dissociation, ionization) occur at quite different speeds. Generally, a combination of effects become important "as a whole" around Mach 5. The hypersonic regime is often defined as speeds where ramjets do not produce net thrust.
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While the definition of hypersonic flow can be quite vague and is generally debatable (especially due to the lack of discontinuity between supersonic and hypersonic flows), a hypersonic flow may be characterized by certain physical phenomena that can no longer be analytically discounted as in supersonic flow. The peculiarity in hypersonic flows are as follows:
As a body's Mach number increases, the density behind the shock generated by the body also increases, which corresponds to a decrease in volume behind the shock wave due to conservation of mass. Consequently, the distance between the shock and the body decreases at higher Mach numbers.
As Mach numbers increase, the entropy change across the shock also increases, which results in a strong entropy gradient and highly vortical flow that mixes with the boundary layer.
A portion of the large kinetic energy associated with flow at high Mach numbers transforms into internal energy in the fluid due to viscous effects. The increase in internal energy is realized as an increase in temperature. Since the pressure gradient normal to the flow within a boundary layer is approximately zero for low to moderate hypersonic Mach numbers, the increase of temperature through the boundary layer coincides with a decrease in density. Thus, the boundary layer over the body grows and can often merge with the thin shock layer.
High temperatures discussed previously as a manifestation of viscous dissipation cause non-equilibrium chemical flow properties such as dissociation and ionization of molecules resulting in convective and radiative heat flux.
The hypersonic flow regime is characterized by a number of effects which are not found in typical aircraft operating at low subsonic. The effects depend strongly on the speed and type of vehicle under investigation.
While the terms "subsonic" and "supersonic" in the purest verbal sense refer to speeds below and above the local speed of sound respectively, aerodynamicists often use the same terms to talk about particular ranges of Mach values. This occurs because of the presence of a "transonic regime" around M=1 where approximations of the Navier-Stokes equations used for subsonic design actually no longer apply, the simplest of many reasons being that the flow locally begins to exceed M=1 even when the freestream Mach number is below this value.
Meanwhile, the "supersonic regime" is usually used to talk about the set of Mach numbers for which linearised theory may be used, where for example the (air) flow is not chemically reacting, and where heat-transfer between air and vehicle may be reasonably neglected in calculations.
In the following table, the "regimes" or "ranges of Mach values" are referred to, and not the "pure" meanings of the words "subsonic" and "supersonic".
Generally, NASA defines "high" hypersonic as any Mach number from 10 to 25, and re-entry speeds as anything greater than Mach 25. Aircraft operating in this regime include the Space Shuttle and various space planes in development.
| Regime | Mach | mph | km/h | m/s | General plane characteristics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subsonic | <0.8 | <610 | <980 | <270 | Most often propeller-driven and commercial turbofan aircraft with high aspect-ratio (slender) wings, and rounded features like the nose and leading edges. |
| Transonic | 0.8-1.2 | 610-768 | 980-1,470 | 270-410 | Transonic aircraft nearly always have swept wings, delaying drag-divergence, and often feature design adhering to the principles of the Whitcomb Area rule. |
| Supersonic | 1.2-5.0 | 768-3,840 | 1,470-6,150 | 410-1,710 | Aircraft designed to fly at supersonic speeds show large differences in their aerodynamic design because of the radical differences in the behaviour of flows above Mach 1. Sharp edges, thin aerofoil-sections, and all-moving tailplane/canards are common. Modern combat aircraft must compromise in order to maintain low-speed handling; "true" supersonic designs include the F-104 Starfighter and BAC/Aérospatiale Concorde. |
| Hypersonic | 5.0-10.0 | 3,840-7,680 | 6,150-12,300 | 1,710-3,415 | Cooled nickel-titanium skin; highly integrated (due to domination of interference effects: non-linear behaviour means that superposition of results for separate components is invalid), small wings, see X-51A Waverider |
| High-hypersonic | 10.0-25.0 | 7,680-16,250 | 12,300-30,740 | 3,415-8,465 | Thermal control becomes a dominant design consideration. Structure must either be designed to operate hot, or be protected by special silicate tiles or similar. Chemically reacting flow can also cause corrosion of the vehicle's skin, with free-atomic oxygen featuring in very high-speed flows. Hypersonic designs are often forced into blunt configurations because of the aerodynamic heating rising with a reduced radius of curvature. |
| Re-entry speeds | >25.0 | >16,250 | >30,740 | >8,465 | Ablative heat shield; no wings; blunt capsule shape |
The categorization of airflow relies on a number of similarity parameters, which allow the simplification of a nearly infinite number of test cases into groups of similarity. For transonic and compressible flow, the Mach and Reynolds numbers alone allow good categorization of many flow cases.
Hypersonic flows, however, require other similarity parameters. First, the analytic equations for the oblique shock angle become nearly independent of Mach number at high (~>10) Mach numbers. Second, the formation of strong shocks around aerodynamic bodies means that the freestream Reynolds number is less useful as an estimate of the behavior of the boundary layer over a body (although it is still important). Finally, the increased temperature of hypersonic flows mean that real gas effects become important. For this reason, research in hypersonics is often referred to as aerothermodynamics, rather than aerodynamics.
The introduction of real gas effects means that more variables are required to describe the full state of a gas. Whereas a stationary gas can be described by three variables (pressure, temperature, adiabatic index), and a moving gas by four (velocity), a hot gas in chemical equilibrium also requires state equations for the chemical components of the gas, and a gas in nonequilibrium solves those state equations using time as an extra variable. This means that for a nonequilibrium flow, something between 10 and 100 variables may be required to describe the state of the gas at any given time. Additionally, rarefied hypersonic flows (usually defined as those with a Knudsen number above 0.1) do not follow the Navier-Stokes equations.
Hypersonic flows are typically categorized by their total energy, expressed as total enthalpy (MJ/kg), total pressure (kPa-MPa), stagnation pressure (kPa-MPa), stagnation temperature (K), or velocity (km/s).
Wallace D. Hayes developed a similarity parameter, similar to the Whitcomb area rule, which allowed similar configurations to be compared.
Hypersonic flow can be approximately separated into a number of regimes. The selection of these regimes is rough, due to the blurring of the boundaries where a particular effect can be found.
In this regime, the gas can be regarded as an ideal gas. Flow in this regime is still Mach number dependent. Simulations start to depend on the use of a constant-temperature wall, rather than the adiabatic wall typically used at lower speeds. The lower border of this region is around Mach 5, where ramjets become inefficient, and the upper border around Mach 10-12.
This is a subset of the perfect gas regime, where the gas can be considered chemically perfect, but the rotational and vibrational temperatures of the gas must be considered separately, leading to two temperature models. See particularly the modeling of supersonic nozzles, where vibrational freezing becomes important.
In this regime, diatomic or polyatomic gases (the gases found in most atmospheres) begin to dissociate as they come into contact with the bow shock generated by the body. Surface catalycity plays a role in the calculation of surface heating, meaning that the type of surface material also has an effect on the flow. The lower border of this regime is where any component of a gas mixture first begins to dissociate in the stagnation point of a flow (which for nitrogen is around 2000 K). At the upper border of this regime, the effects of ionization start to have an effect on the flow.
In this regime the ionized electron population of the stagnated flow becomes significant, and the electrons must be modeled separately. Often the electron temperature is handled separately from the temperature of the remaining gas components. This region occurs for freestream velocities around 10–12 km/s. Gases in this region are modeled as non-radiating plasmas.
Above around 12 km/s, the heat transfer to a vehicle changes from being conductively dominated to radiatively dominated. The modeling of gases in this regime is split into two classes:
The modeling of optically thick gases is extremely difficult, since, due to the calculation of the radiation at each point, the computation load theoretically expands exponentially as the number of points considered increases.