| A method for early-stage design of high-speed airplanes is presented based on analysis of vehicle performance, including internal flow in the engine and external flows around the body. Several ways of evaluating vehicle performance are shown, including thrust maps, combustor mode stability concerns, combustor optimization and trajectory optimization.;The design performance analysis relies on a routine that computes the thrust of a dual-mode scramjet, which is a geometric-compression (ramjet) engine with a combustor that can operate both subsonically and supersonically. This strategy applies to any internal flow which is predominantly one-dimensional in character. A reduced-order model for mixing and combustion has been developed that is based on non-dimensional scaling of turbulent jets in crossflow and tabulated flamelet chemistry, and is used in conjunction with conventional conservation equations for quasi one-dimensional flow to compute flowpath performance. Thrust is computed by stream-tube momentum analysis. Vehicle lift and drag are computed using a supersonic panel method, developed separately.;Comparisons to computational fluid dynamics solutions and experimental data were conducted to determine the validity of the combustion modeling approach, and results of these simulations are shown. Computations for both ram-mode and scram-mode operation are compared to experimental results, and predictions are made for flight conditions of a hypersonic vehicle built around the given flowpath. Trajectory performance of the vehicle is estimated using a collocation method to find the required control inputs and fuel consumption. The combustor is optimized for minimum fuel consumption over a short scram trajectory, and the scram-mode trajectory is optimized for minimum fuel consumption over a space-access-type trajectory. A vehicle design and associated optimized trajectory are shown, and general design principles for steady and efficient operation of vehicles of this type are discussed. |
