Aerodynamic coefficients for realistic space transportation systems in lateral motion

The aim,of the ESA-study FESTIP (Future European Space Transportation Investigation Programme) is to provide and to identify technologies to continue the success of the Arianne-5 program. Within FESTIP, a variety of configurations and technologies for future designs have been studied. These included reusable and winged launchers. For these configurations the lateral motion is a more critical design driver than the longitudinal motion. Goal of the presented study was the investigation of the lateral motion for a realistic hypersonic configuration. Flow simulations in the range from Ma=0.5 to Ma=5.0 were been performed. The lack of lateral stability for this vehicle finally led to several re-design recommendations. Additional simulations showed the improvements in comparison to the baseline.