Preliminary Integrated Design of Hypersonic Vehicle Configurations Including Inward-Turning Inlets

A design method employed for preliminary integration of a hypersonic vehicle airframe configuration with its propulsion flow path is described. This method is primarily based on the integration of the variable cross section inward-turning inlet and the airframe. Three typical configurations include lifting body, sim-waverider, and semi-axisymmetric cone. Rectangular-to-circular, erose-to-circular, and sector-to-circular shape transition Busemann inlets are designed to integrate these three vehicle bodies, respectively. The results of numerical simulations show that the aerodynamic performance of these configurations, coupled with the propulsion flow path, inherits the characteristics of their original airframe shapes, such as the high lift/drag ratio of sim-waverider and the low-drag performance of semi-axisymmetric cone configuration. The computed results also demonstrate that the inward-turning inlets integrate smoothly with their respective vehicle airframes and that the design method is viable. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.