Numerical Investigation of an Active Jet Control Method for Hypersonic Inlet Restart

A flow control method based on an active jet is developed to restart hypersonic inlets. The dynamic restarting process is numerically reproduced by unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes(RANS) modeling to verify the effectiveness and reveal the influence of jet conditions. The active jet improves the inlet unstart status by drawing the high-pressure separation bubble from the internal compression duct and performing a full expansion to alleviate the adverse pressure gradient. Moreover, the favorable pressure gradient in the inlet caused by jet expansion allows for a successful restart after turning off the jet. The influence of the jet momentum ratio is then analyzed to guide the design of the active jet control method and choose the proper momentum ratios. A low jet momentum does not eliminate the high-pressure separation bubble, whereas an excessive jet momentum causes severe momentum loss due to the induced shock. The general rule in restarting the inlet using an active jet is to allow a full jet expansion downstream of the jet slot while avoiding excessive momentum loss upstream and preventing the thick low-speed layer.

Effect of expansion waves on cowl shock wave and boundary layer interaction in hypersonic inlet

The interaction of cowl shock wave and boundary layer has a crucial effect on the stability,operability and performance of hypersonic inlets.Many studies on inhibiting the sep-aration and managing the strength of the interaction of the shock wave and boundary layer with expansion corner have been conducted.However,the expansion waves near the circular arc shoulder to effectively control the interaction and cowl shock arrangement is little investigated.Therefore,the interaction of the cowl shock wave and boundary layer under thefluence of the expansion waves is studied by inviscid and viscous numerical simulations.The results reveal that the expansion waves have an important impact on the interaction between the cowl shock wave and boundary layer and the strength of shock wave,and that there are four types of inter-action processes with the change of the relative impingement positions of cowl shock wave.The expansion waves have a different influence on the shock wave and boundary layer inter-action at different incident points.When the incident point of the cowl shock wave goes far downstream from the end of the circular arc shoulder,the influence of expansion waves is weakened,and the magnitude of separation zone increases.However,when the expansion waves are applied to the interaction of the cowl shock wave and boundary layer on the circular arc shoulder,the separation can be effectively controlled.In particular,while the expansion waves interact with the shock wave and boundary layer in the back half of the circular arc shoulder,the separation is best inhibited.Compared with the upstream and downstream inci-dent points,the scale of separation area in the optimal control region is reduced by 65.3%at most.Furthermore,the total pressure recovery coefficientfirst increases and then decreases when the cowl moves from upstream to downstream,and the total pressure recovery coefficient reaches the maximum value of 68.36%at the incident position of cowl shock wave d Z 8.09d0.

Flow characteristics of hypersonic inlets with different cowl-lip blunting methods

Under hypersonic flight conditions,the sharp cowl-lip leading edges have to be blunted because of the severe aerodynamic heating.This paper proposes four cowl-lip blunting methods and studies the corresponding flow characteristics and performances of the generic hypersonic inlets by numerical simulation under the design conditions of a flight Mach number of 6 and an altitude of 26 km.The results show that the local shock interference patterns in the vicinity of the blunted cowl-lips have a substantial influence on the flow characteristics of the hypersonic inlets even though the blunting radius is very small,which contribute to a pronounced degradation of the inlet performance.The Equal Length blunting Manner(ELM)is the most optimal in that a nearly even reflection of the ramp shock produces an approximately straight and weak cowl reflection shock.The minimal total pressure loss,the lowest cowl drag,maximum mass-capture and the minimal aeroheating are achieved for the hypersonic inlet.For the other blunting manners,the ramp shock cannot reflect evenly and produces more curved cowl reflection shock.The Type V shock interference pattern occurs for the Cross Section Cutting blunting Manner(CSCM)and the strongest cowl reflection shock gives rise to the largest flow loss and drag.The cowl-lip blunted by the other two blunting manners is subjected to the shock interference pattern that transits with an increase in the blunting radius.Accordingly,the peak heat flux does not fall monotonously with the blunting radius increasing.Moreover,the cowl-lip surface suffers from severe aerothermal load when the shear layer or the supersonic jet impinges on the wall.

Effects of trips on the oscillatory flow of an axisymmetric hypersonic inlet with downstream throttle

Experimental investigations are conducted on an axisymmetric hypersonic inlet to evaluate the effects of trips on oscillatory flows. The model exit is throttled with a fixed block to generate oscillatory flows at a freestream Mach number of 6 in a conventional wind tunnel and a shock tunnel. Schlieren imaging and pressure measurements are adopted to record unsteady flow features.Results indicate that trips with a 1 mm thickness prominently suppress external separations, shorten oscillatory cycles, and modify pressure magnitudes. Trips can reduce the upstream movement ranges of separated shocks from nose regions to locations axially 142 mm downstream. The oscillatory cycles are shortened from 3.75 ms to 3.25 ms and from 4 ms to 3.13 ms in two facilities.Tripped cases generally exhibit higher pressure magnitudes than those of untripped cases, of which the increment is up to 21 times the freestream static pressure for the farthest downstream transducer in the shock tunnel. The effects of trips are related to the streamwise vortexes in wake flows, in which interactions between external separations modify the separated flow patterns and enhance the sustainment of the forebody boundary layers to backpressure. Flow processes causing increments of oscillatory frequencies and pressure magnitudes are analyzed, while the flow mechanisms dominating the processes still need to be clarified in the future.

Effects of bump parameters on hypersonic inlet starting performance

Unstart is an unwanted flow phenomenon in a hypersonic inlet. When an unstart occurs, the captured airflow flowing through the engine significantly decreases with strong unsteady characteristics, which may lead to thrust loss or even combustor flameout. In this study, various bump configurations were designed to be integrated with a hypersonic inlet to improve its starting ability. A bump was defined as an integrated 3D compression surface installed upstream of the inlet entrance. The starting processes of these bump inlets were numerically simulated to investigate the effect laws and flow mechanisms of the bump parameters. Tests on bump height revealed that the starting performance could be significantly improved by increasing bump height, with the starting Mach number decreasing by 0.55 for the inlet with the highest bump. The high bump facilitates the side movement of the subsonic flow in the separation zone, which leads to a small separation bubble, thus accelerating the starting process. Further, the starting ability can be improved by designing a relatively wide bump, which results in a decline in the starting Mach number by 0.44. When the bump has the same or greater width compared with the airflow capture range, a growing spillage along the transverse direction can be formed so that the airflow in the separation bubble can be easily excluded, improving the starting ability.

Deficiencies of streamline tracing techniques for designing hypersonic inlets and potential solutions

This work focuses on streamline tracing techniques for designing hypersonic inlets, and two deficiencies were discovered.Firstly, constriction ratios of stream-traced inlets are unpredictable and uncontrollable, which may affect the integration with airframes and combustors. Secondly, stream-traced inlets cannot exactly inherit properties from a basic flowfield through which they are traced. Then flow mechanisms underneath these phenomena were clarified. It was made clearly that properties of flow tubes captured by an inlet are what essentially determines constriction ratios as well as performances of inlets. Based on flow mechanisms, the method of calculating along streamlines(MCS) was proposed, which makes it possible to evaluate inlet performances directly. At last, optimization design methodologies were introduced to make inlet constriction ratios controllable,and simultaneously improve inlet performances as much as possible.

Design method for hypersonic bump inlet based on transverse pressure gradient

Transverse pressure gradient(TPG)is one of the key factors influencing the boundary layer airflow diversion in a bump inlet.This paper proposes a novel TPG-based hypersonic bump inlet design method.This method consists of two steps.First,a parametric optimization approach is employed to design a series of 2D inlets with various compression efficiencies.Then,according to the prescribed TPG,the optimized inlets are placed in different osculating planes to generate a 3D bump inlet.This method provides a means to directly control the aerodynamic parameters of the bump rather than the geometric parameters.By performing this method to a hypersonic chin inlet,a long and wide bump surface is formed in the compression wall,which leads to good integration of the bump/inlet.Results show that a part of the near-wall boundary layer flow is diverted by the bump,resulting in a slight decrease in the mass flow but a significant improvement in the total pressure recovery.In addition,the starting ability is significantly improved by adding the bump surface.Analysis reveals that the bump has a 3D rebuilding effect on the large-scale separation bubble of the unstarted inlet.Finally,a mass flow correction is performed on the designed bump inlet to increase the mass flow to full airflow capture.The results show that the mass flow rate of the corrected bump inlet reaches up to 0.9993,demonstrating that the correction method is effective.

Aerodynamic configuration integration design of hypersonic cruise aircraft with inward-turning inlets

In this work, a novel airframe/propulsion integration design method of the wing-body configuration for hypersonic cruise aircraft is proposed, where the configuration is integrated with inward-turning inlets. With the help of this method, the major design concern of balancing the aerodynamic performance against the requirements for efficient propulsion can be well addressed. A novel geometric parametrically modelling method based on a combination of patched class and shape transition（CST） and COONs surface is proposed to represent the configuration, especially a complex configuration with an irregular inlet lip shape. The modelling method enlarges the design space of components on the premise of guaranteeing the configuration integrity via special constraints imposed on the interface across adjacent surfaces. A basic flow inside a cone shaped by a dual-inflection-point generatrix is optimized to generate the inward-turning inlet with improvements of both compression efficiency and flow uniformity. The performance improvement mechanism of this basic flow is the compression velocity variation induced by the variation of the generatrix slope along the flow path. At the design point, numerical simulation results show that the lift-to-drag ratio of the configuration is as high as 5.2 and the inlet works well with a high level of compression efficiency and flow uniformity. The design result also has a good performance on off-design conditions. The achievement of all the design targets turns out that the integration design method proposed in this paper is efficient and practical.

A parameterized geometry design method for inward turning inlet compatible waverider

Intensive studies have been carried out on generations of waverider geometry and hypersonic inlet geometry. However, integration efforts of waverider and related air-intake system are restricted majorly around the X43A-like or conical flow field induced configuration, which adopts mainly the two-dimensional air-breathing technology and limits the judicious visions of developing new aerodynamic profiles for hypersonic designers. A novel design approach for integrating the inward turning inlet with the traditional parameterized waverider is proposed. The proposed method is an alternative means to produce a compatible configuration by linking the off-the-shelf results on both traditional waverider techniques and inward turning inlet techniques. A series of geometry generations and optimization solutions is proposed to enhance the lift-to-drag ratio. A quantitative but efficient aerodynamic performance evaluation approach （the hypersonic flow panel method） with lower computational cost is employed to play the role of objective function for opti- mization purpose. The produced geometry compatibility with a computational fluid dynamics （CFD） solver is also verified for detailed flow field investigation. Optimization results and other numerical validations are obtained for the feasibility demonstration of the proposed method.