Hypersonic Propulsion-Airframe Integration

This SBIR presents an opportunity to study alternate scramjet engine configurations in an effort to increase spillage to levels between inward-turning and planar inlets while understanding the impact on engine and vehicle performance from a systems level perspective. To accomplish this, our team proposes to integrate new inlet, nozzle, and vehicle flow surface design and analysis capabilities into the Eco suite of tools. Inlet design strategies will focus on developing planar flowlines and new alternative inlet design methodologies including streamline tracing through alternate genera flowfields to explore the design space between the two classes of inlets. Parametric surface flowline optimization CFD techniques will also be employed to further enhance and analyze any promising new inlet designs developed in this study. Furthermore, new planar nozzle flowlines generation routines will also be examined to provide alternative means for the design of the back end of the engine-integrated vehicle configuration. New vehicle surface routines will also be created to allow alternative spatula and waverider vehicle configurations with planar and alternative inlet designs. Flowlines generated with these new tools will be validated using viscous CFD and the resulting configurations will be compared to the baseline inward-turning scramjet configurations over a selected mission.