Research on HIFiRE project's hypersonic vehicle integrated design of aerodynamic and scramjet propulsion

By the HIFiRE project, America and Australia have deeply investigated the aerodynamics, propulsion and controlling system of hypersonic aircrafts. The high-speed ability is evaluated for the integrated design of aircrafts with propulsion system. A series of valuable flight-data and staged achievements are obtained by the flight tests of single-target evaluation and step-by-step improvement, the principal study of waverider shapes and different propulsion systems, and the verification of designing condition by flight tests. The key technique and experimental conclusion are summarized for the overall design by organizing the flight tests of dynamics/propulsion integrated processes. Moreover, the developing trend is analyzed for the aircraft with propulsion system. The results show that the unit Reynolds number of the transition is between 3×10⁶ and 4×10⁶, and a combination of scramjet and waverider with high lift characteristics at small attack angle is the optimized design, which gives some suggestions for the overall design of high-speed aircrafts with scramjet.