21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-1.3.2

PREDICTED DEEP-STALL FLIGHT CHARACTERISTICS OF TWO HYPERSONIC FLIGHT VEHICLES

Mendenhall M. R., Hegedus M. C., Budd G. D.*, Frackowiak A. J.*
Nielsen Engineering and Research, USA; *NASA Dryden, USA

Keywords: deep stall, flight, hypersonic vehicle

An analytical investigation into the feasibility of using deep-stall flight for the return of two hypersonic configurations is described. The flight vehicles considered are the booster stages of the Pegasus XL launch vehicle and the X-34 hypersonic research vehicle. In each study, a combination of analytical and experimental longitudinal aerodynamic characteristics is used in a 3-DOF simulation to demonstrate the deep-stall flight characteristics. Both configurations exhibit stable, deep-stall flight over a wide range of Mach numbers, and they demonstrate the feasibility of a return trajectory with deep-stall flight. Flight test results are presented to validate and demonstrate the low-speed deep-stall flight characteristics of the Pegasus XL first stage.

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