Abstract—Accurate prediction of aerothermal loads under hypersonic thermochemical nonequilibrium conditions is critical for the design of future atmospheric re-entry vehicles. This study presents a comprehensive numerical investigation of the aerodynamic and aerothermal performance of three representative re-entry configurations (a lifting delta wing, a cone-flare body, and a blunt-spiked nose) under realistic hypersonic flight conditions. The compressible Navier– Stokes equations are solved using ANSYS Fluent, incorporating detailed thermochemical nonequilibrium effects through Park’s five-species, 17-reaction air model. Results are systematically compared with perfect-gas and reduced-reaction models to quantify the impact of dissociation on heating predictions. Parametric analyses are conducted over Mach numbers 15–25, altitudes 60–76 km, and angles of attack up to 40°, focusing on lift-to-drag ratio, aerodynamic braking, wall temperature, and heat flux distribution. Adaptive mesh refinement ensures accurate resolution of shock–boundary-layer interactions while maintaining computational efficiency. The results demonstrate that lifting configurations significantly enhance controllability, with the delta wing achieving up to a 63% improvement in lift-to-drag ratio compared to the cone-flare. Detailed chemistry reduces peak post-shock temperatures by approximately 28% relative to perfect-gas assumptions due to endothermic dissociation. Furthermore, the blunt-spiked nose effectively mitigates stagnation heating, reducing nose temperature by about 12.5% through bow-shock displacement. Numerical predictions show good agreement with available experimental schlieren and heat-transfer data. Overall, the study highlights the synergistic role of geometry, flight parameters, and chemical kinetics in optimizing aerothermal performance, providing validated guidelines for the development of next-generation lifting hypersonic reentry vehicles.  

Keywords—hypersonic reactive flows, aerodynamic heating, dissociation phenomena, lifting re-entry, hypersonic vehicle configurations, and shock-wave interactions

Cite: Rachid Renane, Rachid Allouche, Ahmed Neche, and Oumaima Zmit, "Aerothermal Prediction of Hypersonic Re-entry Configurations: Effects of Geometry, Altitude, and Chemical Kinetics," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 458-473, 2026. doi: 10.18178/ijmerr.15.5.458-473

Copyright © 2026 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).