Introducing the HFV-3X, AeroRocket's version of the DARPA HTV-3X known as the Blackswift  represents AeroRocket's proposal for a new hypersonic spacecraft capable of flight to 300,000 feet and top speed from Mach 5 to Mach 10. A miniature subsonic wind tunnel model of the new HFV-3X has been fabricated for experimental determination of CD, CL, CLa, CMa and L/D for use with AeroWindTunnel a subsonic and supersonic aircraft design program. Supersonic drag and lift properties of the HFV-3X design will be investigated using AeroRocket's new supersonic blow-down wind tunnel. Please see the Wikipedia article about the HTV-3X that contains DARPA video and other interesting information about this proposed space plane.

HFV-3X Design (348 KB Download - Password provided after purchase): WinZip file containing techniques used to fabricate the 9 inch long HFV-3X subsonic wind tunnel model, HFV-3X wind tunnel model templates, full size orthographic image of the HFV-3X and an AeroWindTunnel screen shot showing CD verses Mach number for the HFV-3X. More information will be included in the download as development of the HFV-3X continues...

SUBSONIC WIND TUNNEL
The AeroRocket subsonic wind tunnel is a suction system powered by a two speed 1/3 horsepower fan. The test section is 7 inches wide x 10 inches high x 16 inches long. A research quality pitot tube measures the difference between static and dynamic pressure in the test section. The resulting differential determines flow velocity using an analog velocity meter. Small models that represent large designs are routinely tested in the AeroRocket wind tunnel.

SUPERSONIC BLOW-DOWN WIND TUNNEL (1" DIAMETER)
The new AeroRocket 1" diameter supersonic blow-down wind tunnel performs drag measurements up to Mach 3. AeroRocket's expertise in the fabrication of miniature wind tunnel models makes possible the measurement of supersonic Cd for designs ranging from simple high power rockets to the complex HTV-3X. This new supersonic wind tunnel has already been used to determine drag coefficient of the HTV-3X. These measurements determined drag coefficient for the HTV-3X to be: Cd = 0.1016 at M = 2.64.

Miniature HTV-3X Supersonic Blow-Down Wind Tunnel Model

Close-up view of the new 1" diameter Supersonic Blow-Down Wind Tunnel

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For the plot illustrated on the left, data was generated using AeroWindTunnel with Surface-Roughness-None to plot Cd vs. Mn (blue line).

Cd vs. Mn (red dots) for the plot illustrated on the left was generated using the supersonic/hypersonic wave drag equation (CD_wave) added to base drag (Cd_base) then plotted verses AeroWindTunnel results (blue line).

The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) pressure-contour plot displayed to the right is the result of two separate VisualCFD analyses. One two-dimensional analysis in the plot represents the upper-half of the HTV-3X airframe and the other two-dimensional analysis in the plot represents the lower-half of the airframe to form the entire Mach 2.64 supersonic flow pattern. The drag coefficient, Cd for two-dimensional flow was converted to three-dimensional Cd using a proprietary approach attained by over 20 years of aerospace engineering experience. Using this proprietary approach the following Cd results were obtained for the HTV-3X using VisualCFD.