Seminars

An essential problem to be overcome is that a conventional test facility for very high test Mach numbers (say 12) at representative altitudes, requires stagnation temperatures that are so high that a throat will not survive for long run times (10’s of seconds or longer).  The new idea which was first pursued at Princeton is instead to heat only the supersonic core flow (away from the wall) downstream of the throat.  The most attractive way to do this is with a high energy electron beam which is guided by a magnetic field.  Adding heat in this way increases both total enthalpy and entropy.  Various subtleties in how to model the system and how to optimize it are described.  Progress has been steady and current major simulations offer a range of possible performance options.