Investigation of internal-waverider-inlet flow pattern integrated with variable-geometry for TBCC

The novel flow pattern type of high-external compression internal conical of C+ integrated with variable-geometry internal waverider inlet is investigated in this paper. Firstly, based on six different chosen functional relations to push down the geometric line of the basic flow, the linear-function (the distance of pushing down geometric line has linear relationship with the distance of flow direction) is the best way to remarkably improve the performance of basic flowfield with nearly uniform flow after the reflected shock. This novel internal conical of C+ improves the performance by reducing the expansion regions, which is realized by controlling the characteristic lines of local airflow. Secondly, a single-degree-of-freedom configuration of variable-geometry for this type of inlet has been proposed in this design. The simulation results of the design Mach number indicates that the osculating axisymmetric theory concept can be adopted to design the three-dimensional, complicated geometry to capture almost all the mass flow. Furthermore, at lower Mach numbers, this variable-geometry inlet still can capture nearly all of mass flow with mass capturing coefficient equal to 0.98; none of other variable-geometry inlets have been reported globally with such rather high-performance characteristic of mass flow capture at lower Mach numbers. Furthermore, the data of starting limit indicates that although the IWI is a novel type of inlet, the starting limit is nearly the same as the traditional inlet at a certain Mach number.