Boundary Conditions for Unsteady Supersonic Inlet Analyses

New bleed and compressor face boundary conditions have been developed to improve the accuracy of unsteady supersonic inlet calculations. The new bleed boundary condition relates changes in the bleed hole discharge coefficient to changes in the local flow conditions; the local bleed flow rate can more than double as a shock moves forward over a bleed band in response to inlet flow disturbances. The stability margin of the inlet is strongly dependent on the throat bleed configuration since the locally rapid increase in bleed flow has a strong effect on the motion of the normal shock. The new compressor face boundary condition accounts for changes in the unsteady flow conditions at the compressor face by specifying the compressor face corrected mass flow or Mach number either as a constant or as a linear function of the stagnation conditions. The effects of inlet flow disturbances on the flow at the compressor face are represented more realistically with this new boundary condition than with traditional fixed static pressure or mass flow conditions. Euler calculations of the dynamic response of an inlet flow to a flow disturbance at the compressor face with 20- and 90-deg throat bleed hole angles are reported. These results indicate that an extra margin of stability for the inlet is obtained with 90-deg bleed holes because the increase in bleed flow rate as the shock moves forward over a bleed band is much larger for 90-deg holes than for 20-deg holes.