Antonio VITALE, Sara DI BENEDET TO, Marco MARINI, Simone PIZZURRO, Roberto BERTACIN
DOI Number: XXX-YYY-ZZZ
Conference number: HiSST 2024-00141
Flying faster and higher to reduce travel times on long haul routes is one of the main goals of the
aerospace research in the last decades. Flight mechanics analyses play a critical role in the development
of high-speed vehicles, from their conceptual design till to the flight test execution and post flight
studies aimed at the exploitation of experimental data. This paper describes the flight mechanics
activities performed in the preliminary design phase of a hypersonic demonstrator, which is based on
the waverider concept and equipped with a scramjet air-breathing propulsion system. Its experimental
mission envisages an air-launched solution and exploits a launch vehicle to achieve the desired
experimental conditions. Specifically, the paper presents and discuss the analyses executed to
investigate the hypersonic demonstrator’s flyability properties and to define the mission nominal
trajectory. The former analyses exploit the aerodynamic database to assess trimmability,
manoeuvrability and static stability of the vehicle on the whole flight envelope of interest. Trajectory
computation is carried out by solving a constrained nonlinear optimization problem, which takes into
account the compliance to the applicable mission requirements and system constraints. Obtained results
provide useful information concerning the optimal vehicle configuration and confirm the feasibility of
the flight test.