NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF THE SCRAMJET ENGINE: FROM NUMERICAL FLIGHT TO INTELLIGENT NUMERICAL FLIGHT

Numerical flight of the scramjet engine has experienced extensive developments in recent years because of the advances in numerical method, physical modeling, and computer hardware. The numerical simulation of the internal and external coupling flow is gradually applied to the practical scenarios. With the rapid advances in combustion modeling, aerodynamics, structure design, material, and multi-physics coupling model, the “general numerical flight” that simultaneously resolves multiple physics fields might be available in the foreseeable future. Based on the latest developments of numerical flight and artificial intelligence (AI), the “intelligent numerical flight” is proposed in this study. On the one hand, intelligent numerical flight employs the artificial intelligence methodologies to address the conventional challenges in the field of numerical flight such as mesh generation and adaptation, high-fidelity physics modeling, data processing, and knowledge mining etc., which significantly promotes the accuracy and efficiency of numerical flight. On the other hand, intelligent numerical flight could be a breakthrough in the field of scramjet engine design. The artificial intelligence technique and massive data from multiple sources provide a solid foundation for building a high-fidelity digital twin of the scramjet engine. With the help of the digital twin, the full trajectory flight testing of a scramjet engine can be conducted in the virtual space, which may drastically speed up the design iteration. Moreover, the digital twin can run in parallel with the real scramjet engine during a ground test or a flight test. According to the experimental data, the digital twin rapidly generates multi-physics solutions of the scramjet engine. The status of the scramjet engine can be evaluated in a real-time manner. To facilitate the development of intelligent numerical flight, more effort should be spent on developing AI models that are both data-driven and physics informed, an intelligent software platform that resolves multiple physics fields, and a high-fidelity digital twin of the scramjet engine.