Derivation and validation of a similarity law for free-flight wind tunnel tests of parallel stage separation

Aiming at the safety problem of the stage separation of parallel reusable high-speed air vehicles, this paper studies the unsteady test method and focuses on deriving a similarity law of parallel stage separation free-flight wind tunnel tests. The new similarity law considers the influences of aerodynamic force and gravity on the motions of the two stages, as well as the influence of aerodynamic interference between the two stages on each other’s motion. From the perspective of multi-angle physical equations, the conditions to ensure that the two-stage separation trajectory of a wind tunnel test is similar to that of a real air vehicle are derived innovatively, so as to ensure the authenticity and credibility of wind tunnel test results. The similarity law is verified by an HIFiRE-5 air vehicle, and the separation trajectories of wind tunnel tests and the real air vehicle are obtained by numerical simulation. The research shows that the similarity law derived in this paper can ensure that wind tunnel free-flight tests have the ability to predict the two-stage separation characteristics of real parallel vehicles. By analyzing the separation trajectory curve of the typical state, it is found that the new method can ensure that the trajectory error of a wind tunnel test does not exceed 1%, which indicates that this method is credible. The establishment of the new method lays the foundation for subsequent wind tunnel tests and provides support for research on the safety of the stage separation of parallel reusable air vehicles.