Aerodynamic Design of a Supersonic Inlet with a Parametric Bump

Numerical investigations were performed with an external-compression inlet with a three-dimensional bump at Mach 2 to scrutinize the geometrical effects of the bump in controlling the interaction of a shock wave with a boundary layer. The inlet was designed for two oblique shock waves and a terminal normal shock wave followed by a subsonic diffuser, with a circular cross section throughout. The bump-type inlet that replaced the aft ramp of the conventional ramp-type inlet was optimized with respect to the inlet performance parameters as well as compared with the conventional ramp-type inlet. The current numerical simulations showed that a bump-type inlet can provide an improvement in the total pressure recovery downstream of the shock wave/boundary layer interaction over a conventional ramp-type inlet.