Air-breathing propulsion has the potential to decrease the cost per kilogram for access-to-space, while increasing the flexibility of available low earth orbits. However, to meet the performance requirements, fuel-air mixing inside of scramjet engines and thermal management still need to be improved.

An option to address these issues is to use intrinsically generated vortices from scramjet inlets to enhance fuel-air mixing further downstream, leading to shorter, less internal drag generating, and thus more efficient engines. Previous works have studied this vortex-injection interaction numerically, but validation was impractical due to lack of published experimental data. This paper extends upon these previous works by providing experimental data for a canonical geometry, obtained in the T4 Stalker Tube at Mach 8 flight conditions, and assesses the accuracy of numerical methodologies such as RANS CFD to predict the vortex-injection interaction.

Focus is placed on understanding the ability of the numerical methodology to replicate the most important aspects of the vortex-injection interaction. Results show overall good agreement between the numerical and experimental results, as all major features are captured. However, limitations are encountered, especially due to a localised region of over predicted heat flux.

The objective of this study is to identify, evaluate, and provide recommendations towards the realisation of near-term hypersonic flight hardware through the consideration of carrier vehicle constraints. The current rush of available funds for hypersonic research cannot cause a program to ignore growth potential for future missions. The prior NB-52 carrier vehicles, famous for the X-15 and X-43A missions, are retired. Next generation hypersonic demonstrator requirements will necessitate a substitution of carrier vehicle capability. Flight vehicle configuration, technology requirements, and recommendations are arrived at by constructing and evaluating a hypersonic technology demonstrator design matrix. This multi-disciplinary parametric sizing investigation of hypersonic vehicle demonstrators focuses on the evaluation of the combined carrier platform, booster, and hypersonic cruiser solution space topography. Promising baseline configurations are evaluated against operational requirements by trading fuel type, endurance cruise time, and payload weight. The multi-disciplinary study results are constrained with carrier payload mass and geometry limitations. The multi-disciplinary results provide physical insights into near-term hypersonic demonstrator payload and cruise time requirements that will stretch the capability of existing carrier aircraft. Any growth in hypersonic research aircraft size or capability will require new carrier vehicle investments.

The scramjet is a rather a new technology and there are many issues related to their operation, especially when it comes to the combustion processes. Combustion in high-speed flows causes various problems such as flame instability and poor fuel–air mixing efficiency. One of the methods used to overcome these problems is to recess a cavity in the combustor wall where a secondary flow is generated. In this study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code is developed to analyse the reacting flow passing through the cavity-based scramjet combustor. The developed code is based on three-dimensional coupled Navier–Stokes and finite rate chemistry equations. An ethylene-air reduced chemical reaction model is used as a fuel–air combination. The Spalart–Allmaras model is utilised for turbulence closure. The non-dimensional form of the flow and chemical reaction equations are discretised using a finite volume method. The Jacobian-Free Newton–Krylov (JFNK) method is used to solve the coupled system of non-linear equations. The JFNK is a matrix-free solution method which improves the computational cost of Newton’s method. The parameters that affect the performance of the JFNK method are studied in the analysis of a scramjet combustor. The influence of the forcing term on the convergence of the JFNK method is studied in the analysis of scramjet combustor. Different upwind flux vector splitting methods are utilised. Various flux limiter techniques are employed for the calculations of higher order flux vectors. The effects of flux vector splitting and flux limiter methods on the convergence and accuracy of the JFNK method are evaluated. Moreover, the variations of the mixing efficiency with fuel injection angles are studied.