computational modeling of air-based missiles separation from fighter airplanes using six-degree-of-freedom simulation with the presence of the thrust force

Numerical simulations have been performed to study the separation process of two air-launched missiles (phoenix and aim9x) from fighter airplanes (f-14 and f-5). two launching mechanisms, rail launch, and ejector launch were modeled. two aspects of safe separation were investigated i.e. the missile should not collide physically with the airplane parts and the rocket plume should not invade the airplane skin and not affect the engine inlet. the computational framework consists of a transient density-based flow solver, dynamic unstructured mesh, a six-degree-of-freedom rigid body dynamics suite, and thrust force modeling. the thrust force has been modeled in two ways. the first method applies a dynamic force vector acting on the missile without the presence of the plume. the second method applies a pressure inlet boundary condition to simulate the exhausting plume. the method has been verified with experimental data and the results are presented by demonstrating the missile motion and trajectory parameters plots.