Drag reduction and thermal protection schemes for supersonic/hypersonic vehicles play decisive roles in flow control and aerodynamic configuration protection. Even though remarkable progress, including forward-facing cavity, opposing injection, aerospike, energy deposition, and their combinational concepts, has been made in recent years, great challenges still exist regarding the internal fluid mechanism and higher performance of current schemes. Additionally, novel concepts, from the perspective of aircraft design and aerodynamic investigation, are desired for future engineering applications.

This Special Issue aims to collate papers with a focus on the theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and experimental investigation of drag reduction and thermal protection mechanisms for supersonic/hypersonic aircraft. Novel concepts breaking through current schemes are encouraged, and high-level review articles that point out future advances in this field are especially welcome.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Supersonic/hypersonic aircraft design
• Flow control techniques
• Complex fluid mechanisms
• Aerodynamic analysis and configuration optimization
• Measurement or simulation of heat transfer
• Validation and verification of computational fluid dynamics
• Wind-tunnel experiment and accurate measurement