Abstract
Motivated by knowledge gaps within the topics of wicking dry-out and graded porosity, we present a computational method to determine the optimum micropore distribution for maximum cooling in response to an incident heat flux on the leading edge (LE) of hypersonic aircraft. The investigated geometry is a 5° half-angle wedge with a semicircular nose tip of 1 mm radius of curvature. The aerodynamic heat flux along the LE is estimated for Mach 5–8. The complex method of optimization is a gradient-free method that is used to maximize the cooling effectiveness in the porous LE with stratified permeability. We show that porosity optimization leads to a modest 6% increase in cooling effectiveness near the stagnation point. The results are then used to analyze the LE’s ability to pump the liquid coolant passively from capillary action during acceleration. We determine that a porous LE having an average pore diameter of with strong wettability performs far better than a pore diameter of with poor wettability.
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