Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2016
Scramjet engines are used under extreme temperatures and with wide range of Mach numbers from 3 to 8 or higher and have shown different control properties from other airbreathing engines. New control problems involving distributed parameter control have been found concerning investigations of the control of scramjet engines whose physical states are spatially interacted and whose governing equations are partial differential equations. The work of this paper is based on the application of distributed parameter control conception to study the control problems of scramjet engines with the aim of achieving the desirable design properties and increasing control reliability. A new control idea based on shape control theory is put forward to realise the distributed parameter control of scramjet engines with the preconditions of proper space dimension and frequency-domain simplification. Simulation results and theoretic analysis for an axisymmetric, wall-injection scramjet engine show the feasibility and validity of the control idea.