Light-Weight Multifunctional Hypersonic Structures

Several design platforms are being considered for hypersonic vehicles for various DOD applications. The most probable candidate for air-breathing hypersonic propulsion is the supersonic combustion ramjet, or scramjet. At the inlet to a ramjet or scramjet engine, shocks may impinge on the surface of the vehicle, resulting in boundary layer separation from the vehicle surface and loss of total pressure into the engine, reducing engine efficiency or, in extreme cases, causing engine stall. The location of the shock impingement will vary with Mach number, indicating the need for an adaptive system to control flow separation. Multifunctional MHD devices, like those demonstrated in Phase I, can be designed to provide this control. If an array of these devices were to be placed on the surface of an engine inlet and controlled independently, they could be used to increase the static pressure at the precise location of the shock impingement and reduce vulnerability to boundary layer separation. The experimental program supported by this SBIR Phase II funding will investigate this hypothesis of flow control during simulated reentry conditions.