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The aerodynamic performance of nacelle inlets under crosswind conditions is crucial for engine stability and efficiency. Current parametric investigations are predominantly focused on cruise operations, with minimal consideration given to crosswind conditions. This study employs an iCST-based parametric modeling approach to construct geometric models. A systematic examination of key geometric parameters—including the throat axial location, fan face radius, and leading-edge radii of the inner and outer contours is conducted. The reliability of the numerical methodology was established through a two-step validation process using both the iCST-generated non-axisymmetric model and the DLR-F6 benchmark model, followed by a geometric sensitivity analysis based on parametrically generated axisymmetric models. The results demonstrate that the inner contour leading-edge radius (ROC_I/R_hi) has the most substantial influence on flow separation. When ROC_I/R_hi decreases from 7.84% to 3.46%, the peak maximum circumferential total pressure distortion index (IDCmax) is increased by 86.78% with a 53.85% rearward shift in the complete reattachment mass flow rate. Correspondingly, a similar reduction in the outer contour leading-edge radius (ROC_O/R_hi) from 9.38% to 4.69% results in a 55.50% increase in peak IDCmax and a 33.33% rearward shift. Comparatively, the fan face radius shows minimal impact on flow distortion (increases by 9.72%), but more pronounced effects on total pressure recovery, while rearward movement of the throat axial location (35.00% to 69.00%) causes a 30.03% rise in IDCmax and 43.75% complete flow reattachment delay. It is concluded that the leading-edge optimization is crucial for crosswind resilience, with the inner contour geometry being particularly influential, providing parametric foundations for robust inlet design across a wide range of operating regimes. In addition, it is also found that the effects of Reynolds number (Re) lie in two folds: (1) For a fixed model scale, the aerodynamic performance of the inlet suffers a remarkable degradation with rapidly rising IDCmax as the crosswind velocity-based Re is increased to cause significant flow separations. (2) For a fixed crosswind velocity, the peak IDCmax progressively decreases with the increasing scale based Re, while σ exhibits an overall enhancement as Re rises.

Aircraft secondary flow systems are small-flow circulation devices that are used for thermal and cold management, flow control, and energy generation on aircraft. The aerodynamic characteristics of main-flow-based inlets have been widely studied, but the secondary-flow-based small inlets, jets, and blowing and suction devices have seldom been studied. Two types of secondary flow systems embedded in a supersonic aircraft wing, a ram-air intake and a submerged intake, are researched here. Firstly, wind tunnel tests under subsonic, transonic, and supersonic conditions are carried out to test the total pressure recovery and total pressure distortion. Secondly, numerical simulations are used to analyze the flow characteristics in the secondary flow systems. The numerical results are validated with experimental data. The calculating errors of the total pressure recovery on the ram-air and submerged secondary flow systems are 8% and 10%, respectively. The simulation results demonstrate that the total pressure distortion tends to grow while the total pressure recovery drops with the increasing Mach number. As the Mach number increases from 0.4 to 2, the total pressure recovery of the ram-air secondary flow system decreases by 68% and 71% for the submerged system. Moreover, the total pressure distortion of the ram-air and submerged secondary flow systems is increased by 19.7 times and 8.3 times, respectively. Thirdly, a detailed flow mechanism is studied based on the simulation method. It is found that the flow separation at the front part of the tube is induced by adverse pressure gradients, which primarily determine the total pressure recovery at the outlet. The three-dimensional vortex in the tube is mainly caused by the change in cross-sectional shape, which influences the total pressure distortion.

The submerged inlet exhibits good stealth characteristics and lower drag, but it has a low total pressure recovery coefficient and high distortion rate, which limits its widespread application. This paper proposes a vortex diverter aimed at enhancing the performance of the submerged inlet and investigates the aerodynamic coupling mechanism between the vortex diverter and the submerged inlet in detail. Firstly, based on the flow field characteristics of the submerged inlet, the design principles of the vortex diverter are proposed. Then, the impact of the vortex diverter on the flow field of the submerged inlet is analyzed using the numerical method. Finally, the matching design between the vortex diverter and the submerged inlet is explored. The results show that the vortex diverter improves the average total pressure of the airflow inside the inlet by exhausting the low-energy flow from the larger radius side of the inlet, thereby suppressing flow separation and enhancing flow field uniformity. The vortex diverter improves the intake performance of the submerged inlet under different incoming flow Mach numbers, inlet exit Mach numbers, angles of attack, and small sideslip angles. The maximum increase in the total pressure recovery coefficient is 3.1099%, and the maximum reduction in the circumferential total pressure distortion is 49.5207%. Among the design parameters, the horizontal distance between the leading edge of the vortex diverter and the inlet lip has the greatest influence on the intake performance, and the best control effect is achieved when the vortex diverter is installed at the throat position. Furthermore, after installing the vortex diverter, reducing the side-edge angle of the entrance appropriately can effectively reduce the intensity of the secondary flow, thereby improving the total pressure recovery at the exit and reducing the distortion rate.

In the present article, numerical analysis has been performed on a dump diffuser model, to study the effect of sidewall expansion angle (SWA), on its performance aspects. SWA has been varied from 90° to 1° and performance has been evaluated in terms of major influencing aspects. It is observed that, at SWA of magnitudes greater than 11°, there is no significant change in the performance. But at SWA below 11°, significant changes, which enhance the performance are observed. It is noticed that at SWA in range, from 3.57° to 8°, higher static pressure recovery (almost from 25 to 33% of inlet dynamic pressure) happens in the dump and annular regions. SWA of magnitudes less than 11° have resulted in smaller, low dense and higher intense recirculation zones. At the SWA of 3.57°, static pressure recovered is maximum and total pressure lost is minimum. But that SWA causes too much delay in pressure stabilization on the liner wall. However, SWA of magnitudes less than 3.57° have resulted in comparatively poor performance. Eventually, sidewall angle in the range from 5° to 7° is found to be optimum as it yields higher static pressure recovery and low total pressure loss. This range also results in early stabilization of pressure both on the liner and casing walls.

Submerged inlets have been widely used in advanced aircraft due to their excellent stealth characteristics, but they also suffer from poor aerodynamic performance. To improve the aerodynamic efficiency while maintaining stealth capabilities, this paper proposes a design scheme for a front auxiliary inlet with an inlet grille. The front auxiliary inlet is connected to the main inlet to form a composite inlet system. The low-energy upstream airflow that accumulates at the inlet is guided by the front auxiliary inlet to flow into the mainstream, resulting in a stable and high-quality airflow. A certain type of cruise missile was used as the research subject, and intake systems with and without front auxiliary inlets were constructed to compare the inlet performance of the two configurations using the CFD method. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis of the main design parameters of the front auxiliary inlet was carried out. The study reveals that a reasonable design of the front auxiliary inlet can prevent low-energy airflow, which accumulates on the missile body surface, from directly entering the inlet. Moreover, the front auxiliary inlet can inject additional mechanical energy into the low-energy airflow, inhibit airflow separation, and improve the uniformity of the flow field. Under cruise conditions, the total pressure recovery coefficient of the front auxiliary inlet configuration increased by 12.39% compared to the model without a front auxiliary inlet configuration. Furthermore, the total pressure distortion index was reduced by 47.24%.

Scramjet intake usually employs shock waves to reduce the flow velocity and increases the static pressure of the flow. However, this causes flow separation and multiple reflections of shock waves, which result in total pressure loss for the flow. This paper discusses the performance enhancement of scramjet intake through the implementation of a concavity along the cowl surface. The baseline intake model used here is the same as that reported in Emami et al. (1995) Two models with the concavities of depth 0.05 and 0.1 inches on cowl inner surface are numerically simulated at Mach number 4.03, and compared with the base model. An improvement in the performance is investigated in terms of total pressure and flow separation. Present study shows that a concavity on cowl surface reduces the flow separation on the ramp wall and increases the total pressure when compared to the base case. This is achieved by expansion fans produced at the beginning of the concavity. These expansion fans weaken the cowl lip shock and suppress the separation size. Further, it turns the shock waves along the flow, decreasing the number of shock wave reflections in the isolator. Thus, increase in total pressure at the exit of the isolator is observed. It is found that there is a marginal increase in Mach number for both the concavity cases without any change in mass flow rate. There was a minor flow distortion observed, which may be corrected by changing the isolator length. This study demonstrates the scope of overall improvement in scramjet engine performance by implementing concavity along the cowl surface.

A Counter Rotating Turbine (CRT) is an axial flow turbine with a nozzle followed by two rotors that rotate in the opposite direction of each other. Axial gap is an important parameter that affects the performance of turbine stage. Current work contains computationally analyzing the flow physics and performance of CRT with the axial gaps of 15, 30, 50 and 70% of the mean axial chord. Turbine components nozzle and the two rotors are modeled for all the axial gaps of CRT. At nozzle inlet, total pressure is taken as boundary condition and at rotor 2 outlet, mass flow rate is specified. Total pressure, entropy and TKE contours plotted at the inlet and outlet of the blade rows are utilized to analyze the effect of axial gap. Mass flow average distributions of entropy, TKE and relative stagnation pressure loss drawn at rotor 1 and rotor 2 outlets estimate the changes in flow losses with respect to axial gap. The intermediate axial gap of x/a = 0.3 is found to be beneficial for CRT for most of the flow rates. Also, it is found that the smallest and the largest gap cases are showing comparable performance. Thus, results confirm the influence of axial gap on the flow behavior and performance of CRT.

Suitable slot structure of the compressor blade can generate high-momentum jet flow through pressure difference between the pressure and suction surface, it has been proved that the slot jet flow can reenergize the local low-momentum fluid to effectively suppress the flow separation on the suction surface. In order to explore a slotted method for better comprehensive suppressing effects on the boundary layer separation near blade midspan and the three-dimensional corner separation, a diffusion stator cascade with large camber angle is selected as the research object. Firstly, the Slotted_1 and Slotted_2 whole-span slotted schemes are set up, then the Slotted_3 scheme with whole-span slot and blade-end slots is proposed, finally the performance of original cascade and slotted cascades is computed under a wide range of incidence angles at the Mach number of 0.7. The results show that: in the full range of incidence angles, compared with the whole-span slotted cascades, the development of the endwall secondary flow on the suction surface of Slotted_3 cascade is effectively suppressed, the degree of the mutual interference between the secondary flow and the main flow is reduced. Besides, on the suction surface of Slotted_3 cascade, the boundary layer separation near blade midspan and the corner separation are basically eliminated. As a result, compared with those of original cascade, the total pressure losses of Slotted_3 cascade are reduced in the full range of incidence angles, and its operating range of incidence angles is broadened. Moreover, compared with the whole-span slotted schemes, Slotted_3 scheme has a better adaptability to wide range of incidence angles.

In order to improve the performance of a transonic centrifugal compressor stage, non-axisymmetric endwall profiling optimization was conducted for the diffuser under design condition, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) were used to execute the optimization with the objective of maximizing the isentropic efficiency of the compressor stage. The influence mechanism of non-axisymmetric endwall profiling on flow field and performance was discussed. Results show non-axisymmetric endwall profiling is an effective way to significantly reduce the flow loss in the diffuser. The total pressure loss of the diffuser decreases by 9.31% and 20.29% for NA0.70 and NA1.40 respectively. The profiled endwall suppresses the flow separation through accelerating the low-energy flow and reducing lateral pressure gradient. The corresponding high vorticity within the flow separation zone is reduced, which delays the formation and development of the flow separation. The diffuser becomes more fore-loaded, the overall blade loading is not affected, and the pressure ratio of the compressor stage is improved as well. At the outlet of the diffuser, the more uniform flow angle and much lower total pressure loss along spanwise are obtained. However, the backflow with high velocity gathering near the shroud of the diffuser makes the mass flow rate decrease and easily induce the stall, which results in the smaller operating range for both profiled endwall.

In this paper, the measurement accuracy of two different types of total pressure probe and total temperature probe in turboshaft engine compressor inlet channel and the influence of these two probes on the flow field through numerical simulation was studied. At the same time, the influence of the probe structure and installation position on probe measurement results under three typical working conditions of cruise, maximum continuous and takeoff was analyzed. The simulation results showed that the higher the engine inlet flow rate, the greater the measurement error of the probe. Comparing with the total temperature probe, the total pressure probe measurement accuracy is more influenced by the flow rate. The velocity uniformity is less affected by the engine operating conditions and is mainly related to the structure of the inserted probes. The closer the total pressure probe to the support plate, the greater the measurement error. The probe installation position has a small effect on the total pressure loss c