A Numerical Analysis of the Effects of Side Wall Compression in 3D Scramjet Intakes
Jacqueline A. R. de Carvalho1; Mauricio Antoniazzi Pinheiro Rosa1
1 Divisão de Aerotermodinâmica e Hipersônica -Instituto de Estudos Avançados (IEAv)
doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-0097
Resumo
The Aerothermodynamics and Hypersonics Division (EAH) of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IEAv) is conducting a series of studies aimed at flight demonstration of a hypersonic vehicle prototype powered by a scramjet engine. A scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) is a variant of a ramjet airbreathing combustion engine in which the fuel combustion process takes place with the incoming compressed air at supersonic speeds. The scramjet is basically composed of three basic components: a converging inlet, where incoming air is compressed and decelerated; a combustor, where gaseous fuel is burned with atmospheric oxygen to produce heat; and a diverging nozzle, where the heated air is accelerated to produce thrust. The present work is part of a numerical study to analyze 3D effects in scramjet intakes. Two phenomena characterize the technological problems of the intake: on the one hand, the interaction of strong shock waves with thick hypersonic boundary layers causes large separation zones that reduce the captured mass flow and thus the engine performance. On the other hand, the compression process has to be just right to obtain a temperature high enough for self ignition of the injected hydrogen without increasing the exit pressure too much. In this work, it is first presented a viscous modeling analysis using the Fluent code for 3D numerical simulations of scramjet intakes and then an intake performance analysis is made for changes in side wall compression angle.
Palavras-chave: scramjet intake ; side wall; hypersonic flow; numerical simulation