Flight trajectory determination of air-breathing hypersonic vehicles (scramjet).
Scramjet; Hypersonic Airbreathing Propulsion; Supersonic Combustion; Trajectory; Software Development.
The computational simulation of the flight trajectories of aerospace vehicles is crucial for reducing financial costs and mitigating risks in high-investment projects. In many cases, simulation analysis is the only viable method for attempting to predict the numerous scenarios associated with these complex events, which often cannot be replicated in laboratory settings. This study aims to determine the launch flight trajectory of airbreathing hypersonic vehicles (scramjets) and to develop a computational tool for two-dimensional graphical visualization of the simulated trajectories. The literature review was based on existing studies on the flight paths of aerospace launch vehicles, such as rockets, and adapted to the launch scenarios of scramjets. It considers the various factors that influence flight as well as the motion equations derived from the physical phenomena involved in launching vehicles through Earth’s atmosphere. The research includes solving the equations of motion using numerical methods such as Euler and Runge-Kutta, modeling the phenomena through Python programming, and ultimately integrating the results with LabVIEW software to generate two-dimensional graphs. In the preliminary analysis, it was possible to determine the flight trajectory of an aerospace vehicle launched into Earth’s atmosphere with a two-stage propulsion system: the first stage powered by an S-30 rocket engine, and the second stage utilizing a generic scramjet. In this configuration, the algorithm developed in this work was able to simulate the vehicle reaching a geometric altitude of 23 km during the first stage and 33.17 km during the second stage. The preliminary results were validated using computational simulation software referenced in the theoretical framework and related literature, showing only minor discrepancies due to differences in the models used by each tool.