Hydrocarbon fueled airbreathing propulsion for high speed missiles

Abstract

Sustained airbreathing hypersonic flight shows potential operational advantages for military applications. In particular future missiles or drones will give crucial benefit if they fly at hypersonic speeds in the atmosphere. High speed ramjets (scramjet and dual mode ramjet) are well-known as key-technology for these future systems. Military applications are typically associated with liquid hydrocarbons, generally with a maximum Mach number about 8 and non reusability. Advanced studies of such missiles have been performed at AEROSPATIALEMissiles. Reusability could be specified for recognition missiles or high speed aircraft. The main purposes of the presented advanced studies of high speed missiles are to head-line the potential interest of hypersonic speeds in comparison to the present near-term missiles and to address the pinch points in order to lead the technological studies. Hydrocarbon scramjet studies have been supported by internal funding since 1985. Integration of airbreathing propulsion to high speed missiles deals in particular with forebody characterization, air intake design and several trade-offs such as the relative length between the air intake, the combustor and the nozzle. High speed combustion of kerosene in an actual scramjet is one of the topics to be addressed. This work deals with analytical design, experimental studies and CFD computation (two-phase flow full NavierStokes). The thermo-structural point of view has to be taken into account in the preliminary design of hydrocarbon fueled scramjets. Advanced materials, use of endothermal fuels and other new concepts could solve a lot of problems but with a need of technological risk reduction and with a system complexity more difficult to be successfully managed on the whole mission. Preliminary studies of hydrocarbon cooled structures have then been conducted. Hydrocarbon-fueled scramjet combustors have been studied at AEROSPATIALEMissiles using analytical codes and CFD analysis. Two phase flow Navier-stokes computations of kerosene-fueled scramjet combustor have been performed. First tests of kerosene fueled scramjet have been conducted by AEROSPATIALE Bourges. Copyright © 1998 by AEROSPATIALE. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc, with permission.