Numerical Study of Supersonic Mixed Compression Air Intake With an Array of Air Jets

Abstract

Computational study of flow physics inside the mixed compression air intake has been carried out with and without air jets (AJs) at design Mach number of 2.2. Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations were solved with k–ω turbulence model by using commercially available software ansys. The scope of this research is to improve the flow field inside the air intake and efficiency of supersonic air intake by implementing AJs on the ramp surface. An array of AJs containing two, four, and five AJ holes, respectively, of 1 mm each has been made on the ramp surface perpendicular to the flow with equal spacing between them. The injection pressure through AJ has been kept constant for all the cases. Flow distortion (FD) and total pressure recovery (TPR) were selected to measure the performance of air intake. All the simulations have been performed at a back-pressure ratio of 6. The results obtained suggest that implementation of proper spacing between AJs can improve the performance of air intake due to the mixing of vortices generated by AJs with freestream flow. It is revealed that an array of AJs containing four holes on ramp surface works best and helps in controlling the shock-induced separation.