A Comparison Between the Guidance Performance of Canard Control, Pivoted Nose and Continuous Deflectable Nose Supersonic Missiles

Three-dimensional viscous flow has been studied around a supersonic missile with three methods of guidance and control surfaces. The nose can provide aerodynamic control by angular rotation in the pitch plane by a pivot or through continues deflection. If a canard control and a deflectable nose missile have the same trim angle at Mach number 3, the canard control produce bigger drag and smaller lift at zero degree of attack angle, but smaller drag and bigger lift at trim condition. Trim angles of pivoted nose and deflectable nose designs are approximately identical. At zero angle of attack, steering command of deflectable nose design is quite stronger than canard design and this priority maintains to be effective up to trim condition. Drag (Lift) coefficient of pivoted nose is always bigger (smaller) than deflected nose design, from zero up to trim angle. Also steering command of deflectable nose design is slightly stronger than pivoted nose. With increasing Mach number, trim angles of all designs increase. Pitch moment of bent nose increases strongly at Mach number 5, but pitch moment of canard control missile increases less than the other two. The trim angles of deflectable and pivoted nose missiles at Mach number 5 are also identical. At higher Mach numbers, drag and moment coefficients of pivoted nose design approach the moment and drag coefficients of deflectable nose, but lift coefficient of deflectable nose grows faster than pivoted nose design.