Computational Investigation of the Pressure and Skin Friction Coefficient Distribution on a Mixed Hypersonic Inline Intake with Blunt Nose

Abstract

A study has been carried out to find out the flowfield inside a three dimensional hypersonic intake with different nose bluntness using commercial computational fluid dynamics software. This study has been carried out for a free stream Mach number of 6.5, a unit Reynolds number 1.6 x 10 6 per meter with an intake contraction ratio of 2.88. The purpose of this analysis was to investigate the effect of nose bluntness on the external and internal compression in a mixed compression inline intake. An intake models with different nose bluntness has been analyzed using 3 - D numerical simulations based on a commercially available CFD code. The CFD code and the turbulence model used is validated by comparing the experimental results available in literature with computational results. Computational results show that the nose bluntness has significant influence on pressure distribution on hypersonic intake. Nose bluntness affects the shock wave/boundary layer interactions on intake upper surface significantly. Numer ical results of three dimensional simulations are also compared with two dimensional numerical simulations to study the effect of third dimensions on internal and external compression.