Design and Performance Analysis of Three-Dimensional Air Intakes for Supersonic Combustion Ramjet Engines

Abstract

The Supersonic Combustion Ramjet (SCRamjet) engine is an efficient propulsion device for supersonic and hypersonic velocities. The present work focuses on the SCRamjet air intake which serves as the engine’s compressor. First, an analytical intake design tool was developed to generate so called streamline traced intake geometries. Second, the starting behavior of hypersonic air intakes was investigated experimentally in a blow down wind tunnel with a three-dimensional intake model with planar surfaces. A semi-empirical estimate was developed to predict intake starting of three-dimensional intake geometries. Third, the three-dimensional intake was further investigated experimentally and results were compared to numerical simulations. Finally, the performance of the three-dimensional intake was compared to the performance of different streamline traced intakes, designed with the analytical tool. Overall, the specific impulse of the streamline traced intakes was approximately 10 % higher compared to the three-dimensional intake configuration.