Review of Supersonic Intake buzz, problems associated and possible solutions

Abstract

Supersonic intake buzz is a type of shock oscillation that could occur at any supersonic inlet of an aircraft and which can alter the mass flow and pressure at inlet. It may lead to combustion instability also. A lot of experiments have been performed to understand the buzz characteristics while visualizing the flow characteristics through flow visualization techniques. Also, there have been a great effort and research to understand the supersonic buzz phenomenon through numerical simulation with the help of computational software packages. There could be different parameters affecting the buzz. Some of them was discovered by the researchers all over the world. Intake buzz distortion get substantially affected by change in angle of attack. Decrease in throttle area was also found to produce prominent effect on buzz by increasing its dominant frequency. The suppression of buzz has become a topic of active research. The suppression of buzz can help in increasing the efficiency of supersonic inlet and efficient compression, so can result in benefit of increasing the economic output and reducing the fuel consumption. Intake performance was found to be increased with small cowl deflection and by the use of buzz predictor and margin controller. Buzz could be controlled by deflecting the air in an advantageous way and generating a weaker gradient at inlet lip.