A series of numerical simulations are carried out to analyze a supersonic inlet buzz, which is an unsteady pressure oscillation phenomenon around a supersonic inlet. A simple but efficient geometry, experimentally adopted by Nagashima, is chosen for the analysis of unsteady flow physics. Among the two sets of simulations considered in this study, the effects of various throttling conditions are firstly examined. It is seen that the major physical characteristic of the inlet buzz can be obtained by inviscid computations only and the computed flow patterns inside and around the inlet are qualitatively consistent with the experimental observations. The dominant frequency of the inlet buzz increases as throttle area decreases, and the computed frequency is approximately 60Hz or 15% lower than the experimental data, but interestingly, this gap is constant for all the test cases and shock structures are similar. Secondly, inviscid calculations are performed to examine the effect regarding angle of attack. It is found that patterns of pressure oscillation histories and distortion due to asymmetric (or three-dimensional) shock structures are substantially affected by angle of attack. The dominant frequency of the inlet buzz, however, does not change noticeably even in regards to a wide range of angle of attacks.Key words: supersonic inlet buzz, effect of angle of attack, asymmetric shock structure, distortion This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
For successful scramjet engine operations, it is important to understand the mechanism of the inlet unstart phenomenon. Among various unstarted flow patterns in hypersonic inlets, the mechanism of low-amplitude oscillatory unstarted flow is still unclear. Therefore, in the present study, the flow characteristics of non-oscillatory unstarted flow in a scramjet inlet-isolator model are studied by using numerical analysis with the RANS-based OpenFOAM solver. In the numerical results, the amplitude of pressure oscillation and the average pressure near the model outlet are in good agreement with experimental results. In the detailed analysis of the results, it is found that the incoming flow within the boundary layers repeatedly changes direction due to the flow blockage at the end of the model. In these direction-changing processes, recirculation zones near the walls irregularly influence the choked flow zones at the rear part of the model. These irregular behaviors result in non-oscillatory unstarted flow. Additionally, the main differences between the high-amplitude oscillatory unstarted flow and non-oscillatory unstarted flow are addressed.
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