Design of a Scramjet Nozzle with Streamline Tracing Technique and Reference Temperature Methode

Abstract

This study presents a method to find an optimal shape of a three-dimensional supersonic nozzle for a rectangular scramjet combustion chamber with rounded edges by taking into account the skin friction effects. The geometric and flow constraints are defined within the German DFG GRK 1095/2 project and the designed nozzle will be part of a scramjet demonstrator configuration. The nozzle inlet conditions are mean values of the combustion chamber exit conditions with the assumption of a constant specific heat ratio. To generate the shape of the nozzle a streamline tracing technique is applied to an axis-symmetric flow field calculated by the Method of Characteristics (MOC). Skin friction in relatively high pressure supersonic flow from the combustion chamber is very dominant and cannot be neglected in the design process. Therefore the skin friction is calculated using the Reference Temperature Method (RTM) and used for the determination of the thrust and moment vectors. This allows considering viscous effects without boundary layer calculations. With this approach an optimal truncated ideal nozzle contour which yields the geometric constraints can be derived. For the validation of this method comparative calculations have been carried out with the DLR code TAU on an exemplary axis-symmetric supersonic nozzle for different flow conditions. Results showed a good agreement. Finally for the three-dimensional nozzle the analytical solution for the inviscous and viscous case provided comparable data like TAU simulations. Further simplifications of the approach for an efficient three-dimensional nozzle design will be addressed in the paper.