Rapid Design, Analysis, and Test of Hypersonic Propulsion Integrated Configurations

The Air Force Research Laboratory Air Vehicles Directorate needs to be able to rapidly develop hypersonic vehicle concepts and to do so with as little risk as possible. A new technology called Rapid Prototyping will assist the Air Force in reducing risk in choosing the best path for fielding hypersonic vehicle systems. This technology will allow the rapid testing of many concepts, thus adding concrete knowledge to the design space and promoting good choices during early design stages. BENEFIT: The result of the Phase II work will be software that can perform hypersonic inlet/exhaust integrated vehicle design and system analysis with the capability of creating multi-flowpath/multi-duct configurations. This software will have been used to design and create an inlet integrated test article suitable for running in a wind tunnel. This work will provide sufficient information to judge the worth of the concept and provide confidence to move into development of the software and wind tunnel testing.