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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dynamic characterization and active control of unstarts in a near-isentropic supersonic inlet

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

A near-isentropic supersonic inlet, at Mach 2.2, has been designed to give enhanced recovery and thus increased range for a supersonic transport aircraft. In such a design a mixed compression inlet design is typically used. Enhanced recovery of 97% in total pressure is achieved by reducing the unstart-tolerance of the inlet and by an efficient boundary layer control mechanism. Thus the resulting inlet design has reduced stability to unstart in the face of atmospheric and engine-born disturbances, necessitating active control. An active stabilization bleed system is introduced that recovers the disturbance-rejection capabilities required of modem inlets. The bleed system requires 4% steady state bleed and up to 6% additional unsteady bleed for active stabilization. Two separate physical mechanisms for unstart are identified, and active control algorithms to prevent these forms of unstart are designed and demonstrated using quasi-l-D and 2-D unsteady Euler simulations. The CFD codes used have been optimized for accurate propagation of disturbances, to insure that physical mechanisms are correctly captured. The resulting actively stabilized inlet can withstand worst-case empirically determined (by NASA) atmospheric disturbances such as flight velocity, temperature, and angle of attack perturbations consistent with atmospheric flight.

Degree

thesis:*
Department dc:contributor.department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Grantor dc:publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year dc:date.issued
2004

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Ahsun, Umair, 1972-
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • James D. Paduano.

Subjects

dc:subject × 1

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Language dc:language.iso
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17752
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/17752

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
MIT
Base URL
dspace.mit.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
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citation

Ahsun, Umair, 1972-. Dynamic characterization and active control of unstarts in a near-isentropic supersonic inlet. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17752