Pegasus ® Wing-Glove Experiment to Document Hypersonic Crossflow Transition—Measurement System and Selected Flight Results

Abstract In a recent flight experiment to study hypersoniccrossflow transition, boundary layer characteristics weredocumented. A smooth steel glove was mounted on thefirst stage delta wing of Orbital Sciences Corporation'sPegasus ® launch vehicle and was flown at speeds of upAerospace Engineer, Member MAA?Instrumentation Engineer+Instrumentation Engineer§Insmnnentafion Engineer¶Aerospace EngineerFlight Assurance Analyst"_'_Aelos,, • pace Engineel • HH ++Instrumentation Engineer§§Instrumentation Engineer¶¶Engineel_rtg Technician***Software SpecialistCopyright ® 2000 by the American Institute of Aeronautics andAstronautics, Inc. No copyright is asserted in the United States _mderTitle 17, U.S. Code. The U.S. Government has a royalty flee licenseto exercise all fights under the copyright claimed herein for Governmental purposes. All other fights are reserved by the copyright owner.to Mach 8 and altitudes of up to 250,000 ft. The wing-glove experiment was flown as a secondary payload offthe coast of Florida in October 1998. This paperdescribes the measurement system developed. Samplesof the results obtained for different parts of thetrajectory are included to show the characteristics andquality of the data. Thermocouples and pressure sensors(including Preston tubes, Stanton tubes, and a'probeless' pressure rake showing boundary layerprofiles) measured the time-averaged flow. Surface hot-films and high-frequency pressure transducers measuredflow dynamics. Because the vehicle was notrecoverable, it was necessary to design a system for real-time onboard processing and transmission. Onboardprocessing included spectral averaging. The quality andconsistency of data obtained was good and met theexperiment requirements.