ME - 459

Gas Dynamics
Oblique Shock Applications
(Air Intakes)

By
Asst. Prof. ABDUL NAEEM KHAN
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
 Intake
• Purpose: To provide large amount of air for gas turbine
engine to:
– Operate efficiently
– Produce effective reactive propulsion.
• Design: Since mass of air moved through an engine
directly affects the thrust:
– An increase in intake pressure will increase the mass of the air
available
– Thrust will be increased
• Extensive design calculations are involved to optimize
the trade-off between performance and size of intake.
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 Ideal Intake Characteristics
• Provides air as per the engine demand to cover the
entire operating range of altitude, Mach number and
throttle setting.
• Ensures that air enters the compressor at low Mach
(about 0.4 ~ 0.5) generally by decelerating the flow.
• Distributes air evenly over the compressor face.
• Provides maximum pressure recovery with minimum
pressure loss.
• Minimizes the external drag.

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 Pressure Recovery
• A parameter that describes the
effectiveness of the intake system.
• It is the ratio of mean total pressure across
the engine face (P01) to the free stream
total pressure (P0a).
• Pressure recovery is always less than
unity owing to friction and shock wave
formation.
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 Air Intake (Diffuser)
• For aerospace applications the diffuser form the
air intake of the aircraft.
• It performs the function of:
– Slowing down the incoming air
– Ensuring maximum pressure recovery i. e. minimum
loss of stagnation pressure.
• If this function is performed for subsonic flow,
the diffuser is termed as “Internal Deceleration”
type.
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 Pitot Type Intakes
• Suitable for subsonic fixed wing aircraft.
• It is known as the simple pitot intake.
• Pitot intake has relatively thick rounded lips that
help prevent flow separation.

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 Pitot Type Intakes
• Design features:
– Large stagnation pressure
loss (low pressure recovery)
due to Normal Shock.
– Practicable upto Mach 1.4
• At supersonic flight, a normal
shock is formed at the entry.
• Also termed as “Normal
Shock Diffuser”

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 Supersonic Intakes
Supersonic intakes incorporate some mechanism to form
one or more Oblique Shocks.

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 Single Oblique Shock Diffuser
• To secure greater pressure recovery, supersonic
flow is decelerated through one or more oblique
shock rather than single normal shock.
• Spike-type diffuser is employed for this purpose.
• Shown below is the single oblique shock inlet.

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 Single Oblique Shock Diffuser
• In this design:
– External deceleration is accomplished through an
oblique shock attached to the spike.
– Further deceleration takes place through a normal
shock at the engine cowl inlet (subsonic internal
deceleration).

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 Single Oblique Shock Diffuser
• In this design:
– The normal shock is of reduced strength since flow
has already encountered an oblique shock.
– This results in greater pressure recovery.

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 Two Oblique Shocks Diffuser
• Theoretically even larger pressure recovery is
achieved if external deceleration is
accomplished through greater number of oblique
shocks.
• A two-shock inlet is shown below.

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 Two Oblique Shocks Diffuser
• However, with more shocks:
– Boundary layer thickness increases along the spike surface.
– Adverse pressure gradient created by second shock may
cause flow separation resulting in energy loss.
– Greater the number of oblique shocks, more will be the
tendency of flow separation.

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 Two Oblique Shocks Diffuser
• For supersonic diffuser design a compromise is
needed between:
– Increased pressure recovery (by employing more
number of shocks) and
– Increased tendency of flow separation.
• Thus practically:
– Upto Mach 2.0 a single oblique shock diffuser is used
– Multiple shock inlets are required for higher flight
Mach numbers.

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 Modes of Operation of Spike Diffuser
• Several modes of operation of spike type diffuser occur
depending upon downstream engine conditions, such as:
– Nozzle opening
– Turbine speed
– Fuel flow rate
• Depending upon location of normal shock, the modes of
operation of spike diffuser are:
– Subcritical
– Critical
– Supercritical

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 Modes of Operation of Spike Diffuser

Critical Mode:
– Occurs with normal
shock at the cowl
inlet, as shown.
– At this mode
engine operates at
design speed.

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 Modes of Operation of Spike Diffuser
Subcritical Mode:
– With engine operating at
design Mach, if flow
resistance downstream is
increased:
• The Normal shock moves ahead
of the inlet.
• Some of the flow after Normal
shock spills over or by-pass the
inlet.
• Engine does not handle maximum
flow rate.
• Pressure recovery is unfavorable.

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 Modes of Operation of Spike Diffuser
Supercritical Mode:
– With engine operating at
design Mach, if flow
resistance downstream is
reduced below that for
critical operation:
• The normal shock reaches
an equilibrium position
inside the diffuser, as
shown.

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 Modes of Operation of Spike Diffuser
Supercritical Mode:
• Inlet still handles
maximum mass flow.
• Normal shock occurs at
relatively higher Mach in
divergent portion.
• Pressure recovery is less
than that of critical
condition since normal
shock is stronger as
compared to critical mode.
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 Practical Mode of Operation
• For an efficient off-design operation of a
turbojet, supercritical mode provides more
stable operation because:
– It provides maximum mass flow in.
– Provides a safety margin so that a small
decrease in engine speed will not cause
transition to undesirable subcritical mode.
• Pressure recovery, however, will be less
than that of critical mode.
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 Intake Pressure Loss

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 Intake Pressure Ratio

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 Intake Pressure Recovery

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