The flight test of the Central Institute of Aviation Motors/NASA scramjet was numerically analyzed. The flowpath was divided into inlet and burner sections and solved sequentially. Initial simulation of the inlet at high-speed conditions failed to describe the behavior of the data, which indicated the presence of separated flow near the throat. A qualitative analysis of low-speed operation showed inlet unstart and subsequent hysteresis effects that reproduced the main features of the flow revealed by the data. Simulation of the burner captured the dual-mode operation apparent in the data; calculated pressures somewhat underpredicted measured values. Effects of grid convergence, Schmidt number, chemistry models, and inlet nonuniformities were evaluated. In conclusion, current numerical tools seem adequate to anticipate qualitative effects of design and construction of scramjet engines. More work is needed to improve their accuracy, particularly in the field of turbulence modeling.
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Carlos Rodríguez (2003) studied this question.