Low-Cost and Aerodynamics-Aim Hypersonic Flight Experiment MF-1

For increasing understanding of fundamental hypersonic phenomena, the flight test program, named MF-1, is to gather fundamental scientific and engineering data on the physics and technologies critical to future operational hypersonic flight with low-cost flight test platform, which is built on the retrofitted rockets. The MF-1 program is a hypersonic flight test program executed by China Aerodynamic Research and Development Center (CARDC). The MF-1 flight flew in December 2015. The flight focuses primarily on integration of instrumentation on the test vehicle, with application to boundary layer transition and shock interaction experiments. The MF-1 payload consists of a blunted 7°half angle cone, a cylinder and 33° flare configuration. The payload was boosted to Mach 5.32 utilizing a solid-rocket booster without control for the whole flight. The flight was fully successful, and measured transition under supersonic and hypersonic conditions. The heat flux data were given by the three-dimensional thermal identification method to discriminate transition zone. The preliminary analysis shows that the real-time flight data obtained by MF-1 are reliable and can be used to validate the transition predicting model and software. The results show that the existing model is able to predict the transition location of cone at a small angle-of-attack for supersonic or hypersonic flow. This paper describes the MF-1 mission and some general conclusions derived from the experiment.