Hysteresis phenomenon of hypersonic inlet at high Mach number

When the hypersonic inlet works at a Mach number higher than the design value, the hypersonic inlet is started with a regular reflection of the external compression shock at the cowl, whereas a Mach reflection will result in the shock propagating forwards to cause a shock detachment at the cowl lip, which is called “local unstart of inlet”. As there are two operation modes of hypersonic inlet at high Mach number, the mode transition may occur with the operation condition of hypersonic inlet changing. A cowl-angle-variation-induced hysteresis and a downstream-pressure-variation-induced hysteresis in the hypersonic inlet start↔local unstart transition are obtained by viscous numerical simulations in this paper. The interaction of the external compression shock and boundary layer on the cowl plays a key role in the hysteresis phenomenon. Affected by the transition of external compression shock reflection at the cowl and the transition between separated and attached flow on the cowl, a hysteresis exists in the hypersonic inlet start↔local unstart transition. The hysteresis makes the operation of a hypersonic inlet very difficult to control. In order to avoid hysteresis phenomenon and keep the hypersonic inlet operating in a started mode, the control route should never pass through the local unstarted boundary.