Three-dimensional viscous analysis of a Mach 5 inlet and comparison with experimental data

A time-marching three-dimensional full Navier-Stokes code is applied to simulate the flow for a Mach 5 inlet experimental configuration using the data obtained in the 10x 10-ft supersonic wind tunnel at the NASA Lewis Research Center. For the first time, a solution is obtained for this configuration with the actual geometry, the tunnel conditions, and all the bleed zones modeled in the computation. Computed pitot pressure profiles and static pressures at various locations in the inlet are compared with the corresponding experimental data. The effect of bleed zones is simulated reasonably well using approximations for the bleed boundary conditions and the turbulence model.