Design space investigations of scramjet engines using reduced-order modeling

Abstract

Conceptual design studies performed with reduced-order approaches allow feasibility and sizing considerations of air-breathing engines to be configured at an affordable computational cost. The present study is devoted to exploring the design space of a dual-mode ramjet engine operating in scramjet mode by means of reduced-order analysis to assess the effects of propulsive system design configurations on component level and overall performance characteristics. The approach proposed in this work combines axisymmetric flow configuration used for the design of supersonic/hypersonic intakes and solutions of one-dimensional flow governing equations coupled with finite-rate chemistry and thermophysical properties tables in the numerical domains of the combustor and nozzle components. The scramjet design space is generated by varying parameters which are flight Mach number and altitude, intake truncation angle, intake exit Mach number and equivalence ratio. Performance outputs of total pressure recovery factor, compression ratio, captured air mass flow rate, intake startability index, thrust, specific impulse, fuel consumption and overall efficiency are computed for each design scenario. The generated database is visualized via performance maps and analyzed in terms of propulsive characteristics. A feature importance study is also conducted to quantify the effects of design parameters on the propulsive performance.