The Hypersonic Space and Global Transportation System: A Concept for Routine and Affordable Access to Space

Bowcutt, Kevin; Smith, Thomas R.; Kothari, Ajay P.; Raghavan, Venkataraman; Tarpley, Christopher; Livingston, John W.; Afb, Wright Patterson

doi:10.2514/6.2011-2295

Cited by 25 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…For the current engine, the leading edge radius drag was 3.6 N, comparable with the inviscid drag of the forebody wedge (3.7 N). Excluding this drag from the forebody surface group increases the internal engine specific impulse of the engine by 171 s. 4. The result is based on a single shot: A significant caveat for the results presented in Table 4 is that they are based solely on a single shot.…”

Section: (Corrected) Overall Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Increased payload-to-orbit mass fractions and lower launch costs may also be possible. 4 One of the keys to achieving these goals is the development of scramjet powered vehicles that produce thrust sufficient to enable acceleration to high Mach numbers. 4,5 The highly integrated nature of hypersonic airbreathing vehicles implies that the overall performance is dependent on the interactions between the various subsystems and is not easily predicted by component level studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Measurement of Three-Components of Force on an Airframe Integrated Scramjet at Mach 10

Doherty¹,

Smart²,

Mee³

2015

20th AIAA International Space Planes and Hypersonic Systems and Technologies Conference

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Force balance experiments have been conducted within The University of Queensland's T4 Stalker Tunnel with a small airframe-integrated three-dimensional scramjet engine using a three-component stress wave force balance. The tests were conducted at conditions replicating flight at Mach 10 and a dynamic pressure of 52 kPa or 28 kPa. The internal flowpath featured a rectangular-to-elliptical shape transition (REST) inlet, an elliptical combustor with a constant area and a diverging section, and a three-dimensional thrust nozzle. This flowpath was integrated with a forebody and streamlined external geometry to provide the test model. Gaseous hydrogen fuel was injected either through portholes on the inlet, from a series of portholes behind the rearward facing step at the combustor entrance, or a combination of the two. The fuel-off drag coefficient was measured to be 0.246 ± 0.025 and 0.312 ± 0.032 at the high and low dynamic pressure test conditions respectively. At a fuel equivalence ratio of 1.20, the drag coefficient reduced to 0.118 ± 0.034 for a combined injection scheme at the high dynamic pressure test condition, corresponding to a specific impulse increment of 2160 s and a specific thrust increment of 740 N s/kg. This work represents the first time that force data have been measured for a hydrogen fuelled REST scramjet engine at true-flight Mach 10 test conditions. NomenclatureA area, m 2 A axial direction, m a axial coordinate, m A o output specification matrix A F projected frontal area, m 2 A p projected planar or planform area, m 2 a vi element of output specification relating strain output v to stress bar i outputheat of formation, J/kg ρ density, kg/m 3 d k j moment arm for calibration hit in direction k at calibration location j, m F force, N

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Section: (Corrected) Overall Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measurement of Three-Components of Force on an Airframe Integrated Scramjet at Mach 10

Doherty¹,

Smart²,

Mee³

2015

20th AIAA International Space Planes and Hypersonic Systems and Technologies Conference

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“…In comparison, accelerator vehicles are typically focussed on access-to-space and include single-, two-or multiple-stage-to-orbit concepts (ssto, tsto, msto respectively). Examples of this category include the United States National Aero-Space Plane ssto concept (Barthelemy, 1989;Rogers et al, 1998), the German Sänger tsto concept (Högenauer and Koelle, 1989) and more recently the tsto concepts proposed by Bowcutt et al (2011) and Bradford et al (2004). This thesis is being conducted within a broad project at The University of Queensland examining the applicability of using scramjet engines for access-to-space.…”

Section: Research Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

An experimental investigation of an airframe integrated three-dimensional scramjet engine at a Mach 10 flight condition

Doherty¹

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The University of Queensland in 2014 school of mechanical and mining engineering centre for hypersonics abstract Realisation of the dream of airbreathing access-to-space requires the development of a scramjet engine that produces sufficient net thrust to enable acceleration over a wide Mach number range. With engines that are highly integrated with the airframe, the net performance of a scramjet powered vehicle is closely coupled with the vehicle attitude and is difficult to determine only from component level studies. This work investigates the influence of airframe integration on the performance of an airframe integrated scramjet through the measurement of internal pressure distribution and the direct measurement of the net lift, thrust and pitching moment using a three-component stress wave force balance. The engine chosen as the basis for this study was the Mach 12 rectangularto-elliptical shape-transition (m12rest) scramjet that was developed by Suraweera and Smart (2009) as a research engine for access-to-space applications. The inlet and combustor flowpath were integrated with a slender 6°wedge forebody, streamlined external geometry and three dimensional thrust nozzle. The scale of the engine was chosen so that the entire engine would fit within the core-flow diamond (bi-conic) produced by a Mach 10 facility nozzle. The Mach 10b facility nozzle was chosen because it is the largest nozzle current in use with the t4 Stalker Tube and because the offdesign performance of a scramjet engine is of interest for access-to-space vehicles that must accelerate over a range of Mach numbers.Freejet experiments were conducted within the t4 Stalker Tube. Two trueflight Mach 10 test conditions were used: a high pressure test condition that replicated flight at a dynamic pressure of 48 kPa and a low pressure test condition that replicated flight at a dynamic pressure of 28 kPa. Scaling of the test conditions according to the established binary scaling law was not completed due to facility operational limits.The engine featured two fuel injection stations from which gaseous hydrogen was injected. The first injection station was partway along the length of the inlet while the second injection station was at the start of the combustor behind a rearward facing circumferential step. In addition to investigating inlet-only and step-only injection, a combined scheme where 68 % of the fuel was injected from the step station and 32 % from the inlet station was also investigated.To support the analysis of the experimental results, numerical simulations of the engine with no fuel injection were conducted using the nasa code vulcan. Analysis of the simulations show that the mass capture ratio with respect to the projected inlet area is approximately 60 % at each test condition. The simulations also show that spillage of flow from the slender forebody accounts for just 12 % of the flow through the projected iii inlet area, a small but non-negligible fraction. By integrating the engine surface forces, the drag coefficient with respect ...

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“…Among these, the so-called hypersonic airbreathers are considered a research hotspot. Recent interest in these vehicles has grown explosively, and various types of innovative vehicles, such as the X-51A, which is a combined U.S. Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program [1], the Boeing Flexible Aerospace System Solution for Tomorrow [2], and the Boeing Hypersonic Space and Global Transportation System [3] have been proposed and studied. Despite entering the age of hypersonic flight with the success of the X-43A [4] and the X-51A [1], scientists and engineers are conscious about the many unsolved problems that limit the practical application of air-breathers.…”

Section: Doi: 102514/1j055395mentioning

confidence: 99%

High-Pressure Capturing Wing Configurations

Cui

Xiao

et al. 2017

AIAA Journal

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This paper proposes a family of high-pressure capturing wing configurations that aim to improve the aerodynamic performance of hypersonic vehicles with large volumes. The predominant visual feature of such configurations is a thin wing called a high-pressure capturing wing attached to the top of an upwarp airframe. When flying in the hypersonic regime, high-pressure airflow compressed by the upper surface of the vehicle acts on the high-pressure capturing wing and significantly augments lift on the vehicle with only a small increase in drag, producing a correspondingly high increase in its lift-to-drag ratio. A series of numerical validations were carried out on the basis of both inviscid and viscous computational models in which ideal cones with different cone angles and combined conewaverider bodies with different volumes were used as airframes. The results clearly demonstrate that a configuration using a high-pressure capturing wing has a significantly higher lift (with a correspondingly high value of lift-to-drag ratio) than one without a high-pressure capturing wing, especially for vehicles with large volumes. This paper contains a preliminary, results-based report of the conditions under which high-pressure capturing wing configurations were tested.= cruising speed W = gross weight, width α = angle of attack β = shock-wave angle γ = ratio of specific heats Δn = nondimensional height of the first layer near the wall η = ratio of average pressure on different surfaces θ = wedge angle, half-cone angle ξ = volumetric efficiency ρ = density Subscripts B = body H = high-pressure capturing wing HCWL = lower surface of the high-pressure capturing wing HCWU = upper surface of the high-pressure capturing wing

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The Hypersonic Space and Global Transportation System: A Concept for Routine and Affordable Access to Space

Cited by 25 publications

References 7 publications

Measurement of Three-Components of Force on an Airframe Integrated Scramjet at Mach 10

Measurement of Three-Components of Force on an Airframe Integrated Scramjet at Mach 10

An experimental investigation of an airframe integrated three-dimensional scramjet engine at a Mach 10 flight condition

High-Pressure Capturing Wing Configurations

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