Effect of cavity location on combustion flow field of integrated hypersonic vehicle in near space

Abstract

The cavity has been widely employed as the flame holder to prolong the residence time of fuel in supersonic flows since it improves the combustion efficiency in the scramjet combustor, and also imposes additional drag on the engine. In this paper, the two-dimensional coupled implicit Reynolds Average Navier–Stokes equations, the RNG k–e turbulence model and the finite-rate/eddy-dissipation reaction model have been employed to numerically simulate the combustion flow field of an integrated hypersonic vehicle. The effect of cavity location on the combustion flow field of the vehicle has been investigated, and the fuel, namely hydrogen, was injected upstream of the cavity on the walls of the first stage combustor. The obtained results show that the viscous lift force, drag force and pitching moment of the vehicle are nearly unchanged by varying the cavity location over the location range and designs considered in this article, namely the configurations with single cavity, double cavities in tandem and double cavities in parallel. The variation of the fuel injection strategy affects the separation of the boundary layer, and the viscous effect on the drag force of the vehicle is remarkable, but the viscous effects on the lift force and the pitching moment are both small and they can be neglected in the design process of hypersonic vehicles. In addition to varying the location of the cavities, three fuel injection configurations were considered. It was found that one particular case can restrict the inlet unstart for the scramjet engine.