A Quick Simulation Method for Aero-Optical Effects Based on a Density Proxy Model

Aero-optical effects caused by high-speed flow fields will interfere with the transmission of starlight, reduce the accuracy of optical sensors, and affect the application of celestial navigation on hypersonic vehicles. At present, the research of aero-optical effects relies heavily on the flow field simulation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which requires a great deal of computing resources and time, and cannot satisfy the demand of the rapid analysis of aero-optical effects in the engineering design stage. Therefore, a quick simulation method for aero-optical effects based on a density proxy model (DP-AOQS) is proposed in this paper. A proxy model of the turbulent density field is designed to replace the density field in the CFD simulation, and the proxy model is parametrically calibrated to simulate the optical characteristics of the turbulent boundary layer (TBL) in the external flow field of the optical window. The performance of DP-AOQS in the visible light band is verified from the perspectives of density field distribution, optical path difference (OPD), and fuzzy star map. The simulation results show that the method can quickly provide the distortion results of aero-optical effects in different flight conditions on the premise of ensuring the simulation accuracy. The research in this paper provides a new analytical method for the study of aero-optical effects.