Side force on an ogive cylinder: Effects of control devices

Abstract

This study is an extension of our earlier work, which examined the effectiveness of using an elliptic tip to control the side force acting on an ogive cylinder. In that study, only one tip was considered, and thus the effect of tip eccentricity on the side force was not known. In the present study, we examine another elliptic tip of a smaller eccentricity to get an insight into how tip eccentricity affects the local and overall side force distribution. Our measurements show that, although the smaller eccentricity tip has a side force distribution similar to that of the larger eccentricity tip, there are some major differences in their flow characteristics. For example, the larger eccentricity tip is found to reduce the onset angle of attack and delay the disappearance of the side force to a higher angle of attack. Furthermore, when α≈60 deg, only the lower eccentricity tip displays a hysteresis effect in its side force distribution. To the best of our knowledge, this phenomenon has not been observed on an elliptic tip before, even though a similar phenomenon has been observed on a conical body with a rounded tip when the cone was subjected to unsteady bleeding.