A study of unsteady-state operating conditions of a supersonic inlet by the RANS/ILES method

Abstract

Using the hybrid RANS/ILES method, a flow was investigated under unsteady-state conditions in a rectangular mixed-compression supersonic inlet at M_d = 2. The computations were made for Mach numbers of the incident flow M₀ = 1.8, 2, and 3. The geometry of two variants was investigated, viz., with the boundary layer bleed system and without it. Calculations were performed on the meshs containing (1.69–1.78) × 10⁶ cells. The flow rate through the supersonic inlet was varied within a wide range. Under most of the conditions investigated, the flow in the duct was unsteady as a consequence of separation of the boundary layer upon its interaction with the shock waves. For all geometric variants investigated and M₀, the throttle characteristics were constructed by the averaged flow parameters as well as the dependences of the flow rate through the boundary layer bleeding system and the static pressure pulsation level on the air inlet throttle ratio. Comparison of the computed results with the experimental data showed a good agreement in terms of both the averaged flow parameters and the pulsation characteristics.