Characteristics method for determining three dimensional supersonic flow around inclined body of revolution.

A computational technique, called the method of lines, is developed for computing the flow field about conical configurations at incidence in a supersonic flow. The method, which makes use of the self-similarity property, is developed for the nonlinear flow equations. The method has proved to be an efficient and versatile procedure for constructing the numerical solutions to conical flow problems. It has been successful in computing the flow about circular and elliptic cones at conditions where small regions of supersonic cross flow develop and for the conical delta wings where the region of supersonic cross flow is extensive. The calculations made for circular and elliptic cones as well as for the compression side of various conical delta wings are in good agreement with experiment except in regions where viscous effects become important.