Micromanufacturing technologies of compact heat exchangers for hypersonic precooled airbreathing propulsion: A review

Compact Heat Exchangers for Microturbines

With distributed power generation market, the most economical solution today is to generate power through small gas turbine systems, arbitrarily categorized as microturbines (5 – 200 kW) and miniturbines (200 – 500 kW). The thermal efficiency of such microturbines is about 20% or less if no recuperator is used in the system. Using a recuperator (regenerator can also be considered but has a numb...

Boundary Layer Control for Hypersonic Airbreathing Vehicles

Active and passive methods for tripping hypersonic boundary layers have been examined in NASA Langley Research Center wind tunnels using a Hyper-X model. This investigation assessed several concepts for forcing transition, including passive discrete roughness elements and active mass addition (or blowing), in the 20-Inch Mach 6 Air and the 31-Inch Mach 10 Air Tunnels. Heat transfer distribution...

Review of Fractal Heat Exchangers

Nature has inspired many scientists and engineers to solve problems through observation and mimicry. One such example is heat transfer enhancement. The enormous natural heat and mass transfer phenomena have led engineers to seek solutions to heat transfer enhancement problems from nature. Fractal geometries are found in respiratory and vascular systems of plants and animals, such as blood vesse...

Propulsion Systems for Hypersonic Flight

Electron Air Hypersonic Propulsion

Aviation, in general, and aerospace in particular needs new propulsion systems which allow the craft to reach high speeds by cheaper and more efficient methods. Author offers a new propulsion system using electrons for acceleration of the craft and having a high efficiency. As this system does not heat the air, it does not have the heating limitations of conventional air ramjet hypersonic engin...