BOLT-1B Flight Experiment: Preflight Aerodynamic Modeling

Abstract

The Boundary Layer Transition (BOLT) series of flight experiments was initiated by the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 2017 to study flow phenomena related to hypersonic boundary-layer transition and turbulent flow on low-curvature concave lifting surfaces with highly swept leading edges. This paper details the preflight aerodynamic modeling carried out in support of the BOLT-1B flight experiment, which was launched in September 2024. The modeling approach presented here includes multifidelity analysis meant to anchor a large database of low- to medium-fidelity predictions based on inviscid and correlation-based methods by leveraging a subset of high-fidelity, viscous computations. The efforts of this study were primarily focused on anchoring vehicle drag, static stability, roll-driving, and roll-damping predictions. The resulting aerodynamic database was then used to inform predictions of the scientific conditions for the flight experiment, including trajectory modeling and prediction of flight dynamics.