No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

A series of direct-measuring skin friction gages were developed for a high-speed, high-temperature environment of the turbulent boundary layer in flows such as that in supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) engines, with a progression from free-jet ground tests to a design for an actual hypersonic scramjet-integrated flight vehicle. The designs were non-nulling, with a sensing head that was flush with the model wall and surrounded by a small gap. Thus, the shear force due to the flow along the wall deflects the head, inducing a measurable strain. Strain gages were used to detect the strain. The gages were statically calibrated using a direct force method. The designs were verified by testing in a well-documented Mach 2.4 cold flow. Results of the cold-flow tests were repeatable and within 15% of the value of Cf estimated from simple theory. The first gage design incorporated a cantilever beam with semiconductor strain gages to sense the shear on the floating head. Cooling water was routed both internally and around the external housing in order to control the temperature of the strain gages. This first gage was installed and tested in a rocket-based-combined-cycle (RBCC) engine model operating in the scramjet mode. The free-jet facility provided a Mach 6.4 flow with P0 = 1350 psia (9310 kPa) and T0 = 2800 °R (1555 °K). Local wall temperatures were measured between 850 and 900 °R (472-500 °K). Output from the RBCC scramjet tests was reasonable and repeatable. A second skin friction gage was designed for and tested in a wind tunnel model of the Hyper-X flight vehicle scramjet engine. These unsuccessful tests revealed the need for a radically different skin friction gage design. The third and final skin friction gage was specifically developed to be installed on the Hyper-X flight vehicle. Rather than the cantilever beam and semiconductor strain gages, the third skin friction gage made use of a flexure ring and metal foil strain gages to sense the shear. The water-cooling and oil-fill used on the previous skin friction sensors were eliminated. It was qualified for flight through a rigorous series of environmental tests, including pressure, temperature, vibration, and heat flux tests. Finally, the third skin friction gage was tested in the Hyper-X Engine Model (HXEM), a full-scale-partial-width wind tunnel model of the flight vehicle engine. These tests were conducted at Mach 6.5 enthalpy with P0 = 555 psia (3827 kPa) and h0 = 900 Btu/lbm in a freejet facility. The successful testing in the wind tunnel scramjet model provided the final verification of the gage before installation in the flight vehicle engine. The development, testing, and results of all three skin friction gages are discussed. / Ph. D.

A flush-wall injector model and a strut injector model representative of state of the art scramjet engine combustion chambers were experimentally studied in a cold-flow (non-combusting) environment to determine their fuel-air mixing behavior under different operating conditions. The experiments were run at nominal freestream Mach numbers of 2 and 4, which simulates combustor conditions for nominal flight Mach numbers of 5 and 10. The flush-wall injector model consists of sixteen inclined, round, sonic injectors distributed around the wall of a circular duct. The strut injector model has sixteen inclined, round, sonic injectors distributed across four struts within a circular duct. The struts are slender, inclined at a low angle to minimize drag, and have two injectors on each side. The experiments investigated the effects of injectant molecular weight, freestream Mach number, and jet-to-freestream momentum flux ratio on the fuel-air mixing process. Helium, methane, and air injectants were studied to vary the injectant molecular weight over the range of 4-29. All of these experiments were performed to support the needs of an integrated experimental and computational research program, which has the goal of upgrading the turbulence models that are used for Computational Fluid Dynamics predictions of the flow inside a scramjet combustor. The primary goals of this study were to use injector models that represent state of the art scramjet engine combustion chambers to provide validation data to support the development of turbulence model upgrades and to add to the sparse database of mixing results in such configurations. The main experimental results showed that higher molecular weight injectants had approximately the same amount of penetration in the far field as lower molecular weight injectants at the same jet-to-freestream momentum flux ratio. Higher molecular weight injectants also demonstrated a mixing rate that was the same as or slower than lower molecular weight injectants depending on the flow conditions. A comparison of the experimental results for the two different injector models revealed that the flush-wall injector mixed significantly faster than the strut injector in all of the experimental cases. / Ph. D.

An instrument for the direct measurement of skin friction in complex supersonic and hypersonic flows was developed. The flows were complex because they were of very short duration, with high temperature and shocks and often injection, mixing, and combustion. A wall-mounted, miniature cantilevered beam device measured the small tangential shear force on the non-intrusive floating element. Semiconductor strain gages mounted at the beam’s base measure the small strains that are generated. By modifying the geometry of the sensing unit, this design can be adapted for a variety of test flows. The use of engineering plastics and short beam length provide high frequency response and make the beam stiff so that the floating head’s deflection due to the shear is negligible, allowing for a non-nulling design. Measurements were made in scramjet models at the NASA Ames 16-inch Shock Tunnel and the General Applied Science Laboratory HYPULSE facility. Test flow conditions were harsh with the facilities simulating Mach 14 enthalpy conditions (320 atm and 10000 R total temperatures) for 0.3-2 milliseconds. The use of engineering plastics reduces heat transfer, so that measurements can be made in these very hot impulsive flows without thermal contamination of the data. Skin friction data in agreement with other correlations and measurements were obtained at both facilities. Mach 2.4 cold flow tests were also performed in the Virginia Tech Supersonic Tunnel. These helped verify the concept and to establish pressure gradient sensitivity in the case of a shock wave impacting directly on the sensing head. Analysis of the measurement uncertainty in the cold supersonic flow tests showed that an uncertainty of approximately 10 percent is achievable. An uncertainty of 15-20% is estimated for the most severe hot cases. An assortment of variations were applied to the gage to extend gage life. The most significant was the replacement of the oil in the sensing gap with a silicon rubber, eliminating service requirements. Tests at all of the facilities confirmed that the rubber-filled gages provided approximately the same level of accuracy as was achieved with the original oil-filled gage design, except when shocks impacted the gage head. / Ph. D.

A Supersonic Combustion Ramjet (scramjet) is, at least in theory, an efficient air-breathing propulsion system for sustained hypersonic flight at Mach numbers above approximately M=5. Important design issues for such hypersonic propulsion systems, are the lack of ground based facilities capable of testing a full-sized engine at cruise flight conditions and the absence of general scaling laws for the extrapolation of wind tunnel data to flight configurations. Therefore, there is a strong need for the development and validation of CFD tools to support the design process of scramjet-powered vehicles. The aims of this thesis are, in this context, to assess the applicability of, to further develop, and to validate the DLR TAU flow solver for the CFD analysis of the complete flow-path of a scramjet vehicle. The basis of this validation and of the identification of critical modelling assumptions is the recalculation of a series of wind tunnel tests of the HyShot II generic scramjet configuration that were performed in the High Enthalpy Shock Tunnel Göttingen (HEG) at the German Aerospace Center, DLR. / Staustrahlantriebe, bei denen sich die Strömung im gesamten Triebwerksbereich im Überschall befindet (supersonic combustion ramjets, Scramjets), stellen ein - zumindest theoretisch - effektives Antriebessystem für den Hyperschallflug im Machzahlbereich von M > 5 dar. Die Auslegung und der Entwurf von luftatmenden Hyperschallantrieben sind in der Praxis mit Schwierigkeiten verbunden. Der Einsatz von Bodenversuchsanlagen ist auf kleinskalige Konfigurationen oder einzelne Triebwerkskomponenten begrenzt. Die Ergebnisse von numerischen Strömungssimulationsverfahren sind mit hohen Unsicherheiten behaftet, die ihren Ursprung in der Modellbildung für die komplexen Strömungsphänomene in chemisch reagierenden, kompressiblen und turbulenten Über- und Hyperschallströmungen haben. Weiterhin existieren keine allgemein gültigen Skalierungsgesetze um Aussagen aus Windkanalexperimenten auf Flugkonfigurationen zu übertragen.Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich in diesem Zusammenhang mit der Erweiterung des DLRStrömungslösers TAU für die Berechnung von Überschallverbrennungsphänomenen in Scramjets sowie mit der Anwendung des Verfahrens für die numerische Analyse von Windkanalexperimenten, die im Hochenthalpiekanal Göttingen (HEG) des Deutschen Zentrums für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) zur Untersuchung der generischen HyShot II Scramjet-Konfiguration durchgeführt wurden. Die wichtigsten Ziele waren die genaue Charakterisierung der freien Anströmung im Windkanal, der Nachweis der Anwendbarkeit des verwendeten Rechenverfahrens und die Analyse des Einflusses verschiedener numerischer Modellierungsansätze für die Strömungssimulation in Scramjets sowie die Nutzung der numerischen Daten für eine verbesserte Interpretation der experimentellen Ergebnisse.

A Supersonic Combustion Ramjet (scramjet) is, at least in theory, an efficient air-breathing propulsion system for sustained hypersonic flight at Mach numbers above approximately M=5. Important design issues for such hypersonic propulsion systems, are the lack of ground based facilities capable of testing a full-sized engine at cruise flight conditions and the absence of general scaling laws for the extrapolation of wind tunnel data to flight configurations. Therefore, there is a strong need for the development and validation of CFD tools to support the design process of scramjet-powered vehicles. The aims of this thesis are, in this context, to assess the applicability of, to further develop, and to validate the DLR TAU flow solver for the CFD analysis of the complete flow-path of a scramjet vehicle. The basis of this validation and of the identification of critical modelling assumptions is the recalculation of a series of wind tunnel tests of the HyShot II generic scramjet configuration that were performed in the High Enthalpy Shock Tunnel Göttingen (HEG) at the German Aerospace Center, DLR. / Staustrahlantriebe, bei denen sich die Strömung im gesamten Triebwerksbereich im Überschall befindet (supersonic combustion ramjets, Scramjets), stellen ein - zumindest theoretisch - effektives Antriebessystem für den Hyperschallflug im Machzahlbereich von M > 5 dar. Die Auslegung und der Entwurf von luftatmenden Hyperschallantrieben sind in der Praxis mit Schwierigkeiten verbunden. Der Einsatz von Bodenversuchsanlagen ist auf kleinskalige Konfigurationen oder einzelne Triebwerkskomponenten begrenzt. Die Ergebnisse von numerischen Strömungssimulationsverfahren sind mit hohen Unsicherheiten behaftet, die ihren Ursprung in der Modellbildung für die komplexen Strömungsphänomene in chemisch reagierenden, kompressiblen und turbulenten Über- und Hyperschallströmungen haben. Weiterhin existieren keine allgemein gültigen Skalierungsgesetze um Aussagen aus Windkanalexperimenten auf Flugkonfigurationen zu übertragen.Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich in diesem Zusammenhang mit der Erweiterung des DLRStrömungslösers TAU für die Berechnung von Überschallverbrennungsphänomenen in Scramjets sowie mit der Anwendung des Verfahrens für die numerische Analyse von Windkanalexperimenten, die im Hochenthalpiekanal Göttingen (HEG) des Deutschen Zentrums für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) zur Untersuchung der generischen HyShot II Scramjet-Konfiguration durchgeführt wurden. Die wichtigsten Ziele waren die genaue Charakterisierung der freien Anströmung im Windkanal, der Nachweis der Anwendbarkeit des verwendeten Rechenverfahrens und die Analyse des Einflusses verschiedener numerischer Modellierungsansätze für die Strömungssimulation in Scramjets sowie die Nutzung der numerischen Daten für eine verbesserte Interpretation der experimentellen Ergebnisse.

No description available.

In the pursuit of developing hypersonic cruise vehicles, unstart is a major roadblock to achieving stable flight. Unstart occurs when a sudden instability in the combustor of a vehicle’s propulsion system creates an instantaneous pressure rise that initiates a shock. This shock travels upstream out of the inlet of the vehicle, until it is ejected from the inlet and creates a standing shockwave that chokes the flow entering the vehicle, thereby greatly reducing its propulsive capability. In severe cases, this can lead to the loss of the vehicle. This thesis presents the results of a computational study of the dynamics of unstart near Mach 5 and presents some possible precursor signals that may indicate its presence in flight. Using SU2, an open-source CFD code developed at Stanford University, the Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations are used to develop a model for flow in a scramjet inlet-isolator geometry, both in the fully started state and during unstart. The results of these calculations were compared against experimental data collected by J. Wagner, at the University of Texas, Austin. In the present computations, unstart was initiated through the use of an artificial body force, which mimicked a moveable flap used in the experiments. Once the results of the code were validated against these experiments, a selection of parametric studies were conducted to determine how the design of the inlet-isolator by Wagner affected the flow, and thus how generalizable the results can be. In addition, precursor signals indicative of unstart were identified for further study and examined in the different parametric studies. It was found that a thick boundary layer is conducive to a stronger precursor signal and a slower unstart. In addition, an aspect ratio closer to 1:1 promotes flow mixing and reduces the unstart speed and strength. Moreover, an aspect ratio in this range reduces the precursor signal strength but, if a thick boundary layer is present, will smear the signal out over a larger area, potentially making it easier to detect. <br>