Experimental study of effects of tail wings on submunition aerodynamic characteristics

Aimed at the needs of deceleration of submunitions dispensed from the ballistic missile, wind tunnel tests were performed on the submunitions with different tail wing sizes at the Mach number range from 0.7 to 3.0 and the angle of attack range from 0° to 14°. Experimental data about the variance of aerodynamic coefficients with the Mach number and angle of attack were obtained systemically. The effects of the tail wing sizes on the drag coefficients and the center of pressure coefficients were discussed. Experimental results show that the arc tail wings designed are beneficial to both the deceleration effect and static stability. These results are significant to the tail wing design and its applications to the submunitions deceleration.