Principal Investigator

Arthur F Houwing Physics/Science, ANU

Project Title

CFD calculations for scramjet flight experiments

Brief Description for General Publications

Hypersonic air-breathing propulsion using supersonic combustion ramjets (scramjets) offer enormous potential for both hypersonic cruise and cheaper access to space. The Australian HyShot scramjet flight experiment program recently produced the world's first successful demonstration of supersonic combustion in flight. That program is continuing, with flights at Woomera planned by the Australian Hypersonics Initiative (AHI) for 2005 in collaboration with American, Japanese and UK agencies. To support the design and post-flight analyses of the experiments, extensive computational fluid dynamics calculations are required to ascertain the external aerodynamics (and hence stability) of the flight configurations, and to determine the magnitude of the enormous surface thermal loads that result from hypersonic flight. These results are necessary to ensure the success of the experiments and to assist in the interpretation of the flight data. The Canberra node of the AHI, consisting of the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales @ the Australian Defence Force Academy, is responsible for conducting these CFD computations. The CFD code CFD++ will be used for the purpose. The need to spatially resolve high flowfield gradients associated with shocks and boundary layers means that very large computational meshes are required. The influence of turbulence and finite-rate combustion reactions mean that many calculations are required for each mesh cell. The combination of these requirements means that the high speed calculations and large memory provided by a parallel computer such as the APAC SC are necessary.