Novel Inducement to Unstart of a Parallel Modular Hypersonic Inlet

The parallel modular inlet is a common configuration in a strutjet engine of the rocket-based combined-cycle hypersonic vehicle. To study the flow interaction between two adjacent inlets. the flowfield in a parallel modular hypersonic inlet model that contains two abreast identical modules at a design point of Mach 6 is studied experimentally. The current study examines the flow interaction between two mod tiles when one module is in a state of unstart. The results indicate that the unstart of module 1 can lead to the unstart of the adjacent module 2, and the accompanying process of disturbance propagation includes four typical stages, known as double start, single start, transitional stage, and double unstart. Different from the common unstart mode, which is related to the internal flowfield, the unstart process of module 2 is primarily induced by the external flow disturbance derived from the unstart of the module 1, which represents a novel inducement to the unstart of a hypersonic inlet.