Experimental Study of the Multi-Row Disk Inlet

In this paper are presented a concept of a new supersonic air inlet, which is designated a Multi-Row Disk (MRD) inlet, aiming at performance improvement under off-design conditions, and results of wind tunnel tests examined performance characteristics of the MRD inlet. The MRD inlet is frequently called ‘a skeleton inlet’ because of its appearance. The performance of a conventional axisymmetric inlet with a solid center body (spike) deteriorates under off-design Mach number conditions. It is due to the fact that total pressure recovery (TPR) governed by the throat area of inlet and mass capture ratio (MCR) governed by an incidence position of an oblique shock from the spike tip into the cowl can not be controlled independently in such air inlet. The MRD inlet has the spike that is composed of a tip cone and several disks arranged downstream of it, based on the experimental fact that several deep cavities on a conical surface have little negative effect on the boundary layer growth. The overall spike length of the MRD inlet is adjustable to the given flight speed by changing space between disks so that a spillage flow can be controlled independently from controlling the throat area. It could be made clear from the result of wind tunnel tests that the MRD inlet improves TPR by 10% compared with a conventional inlet with a solid spike under off-design conditions.