Dear Colleagues,

High-speed travels represent the next frontier of passenger transportation, to and from space, as well as for civil flights. Flying in excess of Mach 5 is a dream that has been around for over 40 years. Today, market globalization and scientific explorations of space highlight that to fly higher and faster is even more challenging in aerospace engineering. In fact, in order to achieve this goal, several design issues must be addressed, such as vehicle aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics, aeroshape design optimization, aerodynamic heating, boundary layer transition, etc. Further, the scientific community looks at the idea of operating an aircraft at high-speeds, i.e., supersonic and hypersonic Mach, differently.

In this framework, the aim of this Special Issue is to allow researchers and engineers to collect valuable works focusing on high-speed aircrafts, especially on vehicle aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic designs. For instance, the extreme loading environment of high-speed flows demand the design of advanced aeroshapes, able to sustain large heat transfer and mechanical loading conditions, while providing aerodynamic forces to sustain flight. Therefore, this Special Issue intends to explore all the disciplines and design goals, which represent research topics, and/or overviews of program development, of several research centers and industries all over the world. In particular, it welcomes research works related to high-speed (e.g., supersonic and hypersonic) aircraft aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic design, and especially on:

• Aeroshape design
• Computational fluid dynamics
• Hypersonics
• Conjugate heat transfer problem
• Thermo-chemical non-equilibrium
• Radiative heat transfer
• Catalyticity
• Aeroshape optimization
• Capsule
• Sample return missions
• Fluid structure interaction
• Heat transfer
• Shock wave boundary layer interaction (SWBLI)
• Shock-shock interaction (SSI)
• Boundary layer transition
• Flow transition prediction
• Wind tunnel test
• Numerical rebuilding of experimental test campaign
• Vehicle aerodynamics
• Vehicle aerothermodynamics
• Aerodynamic database modeling
• Aerothermodynamic database modeling
• Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO)
• High speed flows
• Scramjet propulsion
• In-flight experimentation
• Extrapolation to flight
• Viscous interaction
• Lifting body
• Winged body
• Waverider

Therefore, this Special Issue delves into aeroshape design of advanced configurations that will allow high-speed vehicles to be faster, quieter, and more economical than before.

Furthermore, the vision of high-speed flow issues and the challenges to achieve the dream of affordable high-speed travel will be also discussed.

Achieving the above-mentioned goals will make the possibility of high-speed air travel a reality.

Dr. Giuseppe Pezzella
Prof. Dr. Antonio Viviani
Guest Editor

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