Design and experimental verification of an equivalent forebody representation of flowing inlets

Abstract

A method by which a simple equivalent-faired body can be designed to replace a more complex body with flowing inlets has been demonstrated for supersonic flow. An analytically defined, geometrically simple faired inlet forebody has been designed using a linear potential code to generate flow perturbations equivalent to those produced by a much more complex forebody with inlets. An equivalent forebody wind-tunnel model was fabricated, and a test was conducted in NASA Langley Research Center's Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel. The test Mach number range was 1.6-2.16 for angles of attack of -4-16 deg. Test results show that, for the purposes considered here, the equivalent forebody simulates the original flowfield disturbances to an acceptable degree of accuracy.