Starting characteristics of a rectangular supersonic air-intake with cowl deflection

Abstract

Abstract Experimental and computational investigations have been made to obtain the details of the flow field of a supersonic air-intake with different cowl deflection angles and back pressures at the exit. The flow field obtained with an inviscid computation on the basic configuration, designed for Mach 2·2, shows starting behaviour whereas computation with k-ω turbulence model and experiments indicate unstart characteristics. Both experiments and computations indicate that provision of a small angle at the cowl tip leads to start of the same intake and also improves it’s performance. Results obtained with cowl deflection shows a better performance in comparison to performance achieved with a basic intake and with a bleed of 2·8%. Sustainable back pressure could be obtained through the computations made at different back pressures for different cowl deflection angles. Overall results suggest that provision of small cowl deflection angle itself leads to improvement in performance achieved in comparison to a bleed of 2·8%, even with back pressure at the exit.