Design and simulation of a supersonic inlet diffuser

Abstract

Designing supersonic inlets is one of the main challenging tasks in supersonic aviation. The inlet types available include external, internal, and mixed inlets. The Mach number, stagnation pressure, and pressure ratio define the aerodynamic performance. This study aims to design and simulate a two-dimensional inlet using Ansys Fluent and an in-house Matlab code. The study started by developing the Matlab code to obtain the best deflection angles for a simple inlet of two oblique shock waves for set conditions of inlet Mach number and total pressure loss. A CFD study of the resulting inlet diffuser is done without the cowling. Mesh independence was reached and the results were comparable to the ones obtained from Matlab. Finally, a more realistic simulation of the inlet diffuser with a preliminary design of a cowling is done. The whole study is repeated for two additional Mach numbers as well.