The Hy-V Scramjet Flight Experiment
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The Hy-V Scramjet Flight Experiment is a research project being conducted by five Virginia Universities whose goal is to better understand dual-mode scramjet combustion by analyzing and comparing wind tunnel and flight data.
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[edit] Overview
The goal of the Hy-V project is to conduct a flight experiment of a scramjet engine at Mach 5 using a sounding rocket. Currently the project is in its design phase and plans to launch a flight test in 2009. This will be the first-ever mode transition flight test of a dual-mode scramjet, in addition to being the first planned-recovery of a scramjet flight experiment. In a dual-mode scramjet, combustion can either occur at subsonic or supersonic speeds, or a mixture of the two. The experiment will be performed at an airspeed of Mach 5 because significant effects on mode transition occur at this speed. In this particular case, the mode transition will occur inside the scramjet when the vehicle's airspeed reaches Mach 5. Teams of students, both undergraduate and graduate, and faculty from the member universities of the Virginia Space Grant Consortium which include the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Old Dominion University, Hampton University and the College of William and Mary, are leading the project and are collaborating with aerospace industry, NASA, and the Department of Defense.
[edit] Payload Design
The current payload design will enable researchers to conduct two separate experiments by having two separate scramjet ducts. One will resemble the geometry of the University of Virginia's supersonic wind tunnel and the other will resemble geometry of Virginia Tech's supersonic wind tunnel. The data recorded while in-flight will be used to better understand dual-mode scramjet (DMSJ) combustion and to make better numerical methods of predicting mode-transition processes. It will also provide a set of comparative data with which the effects of wind tunnel vitiates can be further understood and isolated.
[edit] UVA Wind Tunnel
The University of Virginia's Supersonic wind tunnel was built in the late 1980s inside the Aerospace Research Laboratory (ARL). Previously housing classified gas centrifuge research, the ARL became endorsed purely for research by the National Space Council in 1989. Shortly thereafter, the wind tunnel was constructed in order to aid in the development of the National Aero-Space Plane, also known as the X-30, which was projected to fly at Mach 25. The wind tunnel is not only known for its supersonic combustion capabilities, but also for its unique design. The air is heated electrically, rather than through combustion processes, thus eliminating vitiates introduced by combustion. Additionally, the wind tunnel is capable of operating for an indefinite period of time, allowing unlimited duration scramjet testing.
The experiment is being designed to recreate the conditions inside the wind tunnel's DMSJ combustor at the ARL, shown to the right. These conditions, for air and hydrogen flow, are:
Air Flow
- Total Pressure = 330 kPa
- Temperature = 1200 K
- Static Pressure = 40 kPa
- Mach Number = 2
Hydrogen Flow
- Total Pressure = 1 MPa
- Temperature = 300 K
- Static Pressure = 200 kPa
- Mach Number = 1.7
In order to recreate the conditions inside the DMSJ combustor, the geometry of the experimental scramjet will be a full-scale copy of that of the DMSJ combustor.
