Principle and concept design of full-scale hypersonic vehicle equivalent simulator with orbit gas density profile

A new concept of the hypersonic neutral beam generated from neutralizing the accelerated plasma jet by the helicon wave is proposed in this study. With the multi-neutral beams in parallel arrangement, a hypersonic gas field is formed to cover the full-scale cross-section about 0.5-3m2 of a hypersonic vehicle to simulate its aerodynamics and aerodynamic heating characteristics to minimize the differences between the model test and practical flights. A plasma jet is accelerated by the helicon wave to reach a parallel velocity in the range of 5-10 km/s, and is neutralized by a charge-exchange to form a neutral beam with particle density varying in the range of 1015-1021m-3, and the beam cross section is about 0.0314m2. The multi-neutral beam operation facility is defined as the full-scale hypersonic vehicle equivalent simulator, which can test the hypersonic vehicle on ground practically under the condition of the gas field density in the vehicle scale.