Implementation of magnetohydrodynamic energy bypass process for hypersonic vehicles

The global political structure has changed dramatically since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, and world changes have caused the United States to reprioritize its national hypersonic needs. The US Government has looked at the needs of the future, and the hypersonic aerospace plane is one of the systems included in alternative force structures. One hypersonic aerospace plane concept would involve magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) technology (i.e., the AJAX hypersonic flight vehicle concept) originally proposed by Russian scientist Vladimir Fraishtadt.This paper reports on the current progress and findings of an air-breathing horizontal takeoff and landing design concept using an MHD energy bypass injector ramjet engine being studied at MSE Technology Applications, Inc., HyperTech Concepts, and several universities for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Langley Research Center under a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research project. The areas that are addressed in this paper include: (1) ionization required to achieve the required energy bypass, (2) utilization of a nonequilibrium model to calculate nonequilibrium engine ionization conditions, (3) hydrocarbon fuel reforming, and (4) vehicle performance and sizing. A quasi-onedimensional electromagnetic code combined with a new scramjet model, as well as other tools, were used to examine total system performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]