Aircraft infrared signature, taken into account body, engine and plume contributions

ITBMS 2009

The IR signature of an aircraft is the result of several major contributions, namely: - Hot engine parts of the tail pipe and/or the air intakes - Combustion hot gases (and in some cases hot carbon particles) in the plume - Skin of the airframe, due to the thermal emission resulting from aerodynamic heating and internal heat sources and the reflected ambient radiation from the sun, the sky and the ground. The aim of this paper is to explain how the combination of CFD++, CFD computational code, RadTherm-IR, 3D thermal computational code and SE-Workbench-EO from OKTAL-SE is an adequate solution for computing the IR signature of a jet aircraft taking all this major into account.