In order to provide the line of-sight blockage of the engine face for an advanced Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicle(UCAV), a highly curved serpentine inlet is proposed and experimentally studied. Based on the static pressure distribut ion measurement along the wall, the flow separation is found at the top wall of the second S duct for the baseline inlet design, which yields a high flow distortion at the exit plane. To improve the flow uniformity, a single array of vortex generators (VGs) is employed within the inlet. In this experimental study, the effects of mass flow ratio, free stream Mach number, angle of attack and yaw on the performance of a serpentine inlet instrumented with VGs are obtained. Results indicate: (1) Compared with the baseline serpentine design without flow control the application of the VGs promotes the mixing of core flow and the low momentum flow in the boundary layer and thus prevents the flow separation. Under the design condition, the exit flow distortion () decreases from 11. 7% to 2.3% by using the VGs. (2) With the descent of the free stream Mach number the total pressure loss decreases. How ever, the circular total pressure distortion increases. When the angle of attack rises from - 4° to 8°, the total pressure recovery and the circular total pressure distortion both go down. In addition, with the increase of yaw the total pressure recovery is fairly constant, while the circular total pressure distortion ascends gradually. (3) When Ma0=0.6-0.8, α= −4°-8° and β= 0°-6°, the total pressure recovery varies between 0.936 and 0.961, the circular total pressure distortion coefficient varies between 1.4% and 5.4% and the synthesis distortion coefficient has a ranges from 3.8% to 7.0%. The experimental results confirm the excellent performance of the newly designed serpentine inlet incorporating VGs. 相似文献
