Inflow mass capture control of hypersonic inlet by pulsed laser energy

Aiming at the problem that the inflow mass capture ratio decreases when the hypersonic inlet is under the undesigned state, a physical model is established and numerical simulation is performed on inflow mass capture control by laser energy deposition. The inflow performance parameters are obtained under continuous and pulsed laser energy depositions. When the laser power is 15 kW, a higher pulsed repetitive rate can result in closer inflow performance as that of continuous energy deposition. When the pulsed repetitive rate is 100 kHz, the inlet flow field is simulated in the state that the pulsed square wave duty factor is 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 respectively. The results indicate that the duty factor has little influence on the inlet performance. When the laser pulse duration is 500 ns and the average laser power is fixed, the flow configuration is much close to that of the continuous energy injection under 200 kHz and 100 kHz pulsed repetitive rate. However, the inflow mass capture ratio decreases when pulsed repetitive rate is 500 kHz and 25 kHz. Therefore, with the increasing of the laser pulsed repetitive rate and decreasing of the average laser power, the inflow mass capture ratio increases effectively, and the energy consumption decreases.