Combined Cycle Propulsion Integration

The work proposed here provides an opportunity to take what we have learned within the DARPA Falcon program on TBCC inlet design and our current AF RBCC/TBCC nozzle research and integrate them into our Propulsion-Airframe Integration (PAI) tool, Eco. Once integrated into Eco, representative TBCC and RBCC combined-cycle air-vehicle concepts will be created. We propose to apply these new capabilities towards the design, fabrication, and testing of a small-scale version of the TBCC air-vehicle concept inlet in the Mach 3-4 flight regime. The design would utilize the methodologies developed and lessons learned by our team on previous TBCC inlet studies supplemented by a limited amount of CFD to ensure concept starting and operability. Fabrication would utilize our experience base with rapid prototyping technology to produce a complex model within a relatively small budget. The tests would serve to demonstrate and confirm the following at the mode transition flight speed: Inlet starting of the scramjet and turbojet ducts under back-pressure and transition from TBCC operation to pure Scramjet operation. Success here could lead to further tests with this model at other speeds, testing of additional combined cycle nozzle components, or larger-scale engine derivatives within a Phase II SBIR effort.