Highly Compact Supersonic Cruise Missile (SSCM) Engine Inlet

Using a novel design optimization toolkit, CRAFT Tech has designed a highly-compact supersonic mixed-compression inlet. The inlet was optimized to provide maximum total pressure recovery and minimal distortion at the AIP for straight and level flight at a flight Mach number of 2.2 based on Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. In the proposed work, a more comprehensive computational analysis of the optimized inlet design will be conducted to quantify unsteady effects, installation effects, and the structural response of the inlet to unsteady loads. The unsteady flow effects in the inlet will be simulated using Large Eddy Simulations (LES) with the CRAFT CFD code. The LES simulations will be used to quantify the time-dependency of distortion at the engine face. Structural analysis will be simulated using Abaqus and will highlight areas in need of structural reinforcement. In addition, off-design performance analysis will be conducted at multiple points in the flight envelope including changes in angle of attack, yaw angle, and flight Mach number to assess the robustness of the optimized design. The performance of the optimized inlet will be validated using a series of wind tunnel tests at the NCPA Tri-Sonic Wind Tunnel facility.