Design of hypersonic forebody with submerged bump

Abstract

A double shock waverider forebody configuration, with curved surfaces and known pressure fields and shock arrays, is constructed by a stream-tracing approach. The compression surface consists of a wedge and conical shocks. The conical shock results from a modified wave-derived bump surface that diverts the boundary layer before the inlet entrance. The design is fully computational fluid dynamics based and emphasis is placed on the compact design with boundary layer diverting ability. Controlling or diverting the thick boundary layer safely is a difficult challenge in hypersonic flight vehicle design especially when the inlets are highly integrated with the fuselage. Numerical simulations show that the new combination can divert a significant fraction of boundary layer before the inlet and maintains a good compression ratio for propulsion efficiency at Mach 5.0. Effects of forebody aerodynamics on the integrated inlet and comparisons with other systems are described in this paper.