Ascent performance feasibility of the national aerospace plane
- Rice Univ., Houston, TX (United States)
The national aerospace plane (NASP) is a proposed hypervelocity research vehicle which must take-off horizontally, achieve orbital speed, and then land horizontally. Its configuration is dominated by the powerplant, which includes the combination of turbojet engines for flight at subsonic speeds and low supersonic speeds, ramjet engines for flight at high supersonic speeds, scramjet engines for flight at hypersonic speeds, and rocket engines for flight at near-orbital speeds. Optimal trajectories are studied for a given NASP configuration, the so-called general hypersonic aerodynamics model example, under the assumption that the NASP is controlled via angle of attack and power setting. Three powerplant models are considered: (E1) and (E2) are turbojet, ramjet, scramjet combinations; (E3) is a turbojet, ramjet scramjet, rocket combination, with the rocket mode starting at M = 15. Realistic constraints are imposed on the peak dynamic pressure, peak heating rate, and peak tangential acceleration. Under this scenario, the time history of the controls is optimized simultaneously with the switch times from one engine mode to the next. The optimization criterion is the total mass of fuel required to achieve orbital speed. The optimization study employs the sequential gradient-restoration algorithm for optimal control problems.
- OSTI ID:
- 482024
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-960503--; CNN: Grant NAG-1-1029; Grant TATP-003604020
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
International Symposium on Air Breathing Engines, 10th, Nottingham, England, Sept. 1-6, 1991, Proceedings. Vols. 1 2
Hypersonic missile propulsion system