An Engineering Method For The Construction and Analysis of Hypersonic Vehicle Configurations

With the recent surge of interest in manned hypersonic flight, most national and international hypersonic activities are focused on establishing a new hypersonic propulsion technology with the goal of providing more efficient access to space. This research is to demonstrate alternate propulsion technologies for access to space and high-speed flight within the atmosphere. As a preliminary step towards the construction and analysis of a wide class of airbreathing hypersonic vehicle, a FORTRAN code was developed. The development of this engineering tool is based on the elementary solution of the exact twodimensional, 2D, shock wave theory and on established empirical correlations that are reliable enough to predict very accurate information about the vehicle inviscid and viscous design characteristics. Further, the code is constructed in a very efficient manner, which allows for the design and analysis of a wide class of hypersonic systems, with an option to optimize the vehicle shape and aero-thermodymanic characteristics at the designer’s request. It is noteworthy to mention, that there are two important innovations to this design concept. First, a reliable engineering approach is developed to calculate the length of the scramjet combustor duct. This concept is based on the coupled solution of the onedimensional, 1D conservation of mass, momentum and energy equations with heat addition, combustion and friction. Secondly, a significant engineering design concept is introduced in the design of a minimum length nozzle, which is used as an integral part of the hypersonic vehicle configuration. This paper seeks to document this design methodology, and describes in detail the integration of the core elements as they relate to the overall hypersonic vehicle construction process. Finally, the code is used to conduct parametric studies on the behavior of the hypersonic configurations in relations to the vehicle flight conditions. In particular, the influence of the hypersonic vehicle lift, drag and aerodynamic efficiency are evaluated over a range of flight conditions. The flight conditions of interest to this study are mainly defined by the design parameters, such as, the Mach number, the flight altitude and the shock angles.