NPARC Simulation and Redesign of the NASA P2 Hypersonic Inlet

Andrew Gelsey
Doyle D. Knight
Song Gao
Mark Schwabacher

The NPARC Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes code was used in a
systematic redesign of the NASA P2 hypersonic inlet. The first phase
of the work involved computational experiments to determine
appropriate grid densities, etc. for using NPARC to achieve
grid-converged simulations of the P2 inlet which adequately matched
published experimental data. The second phase of the work involved
formulating the redesign of the P2 inlet as a numerical optimization
problem which was attacked using state-of-the-art numerical
optimization software. The resulting P2 inlet design is significantly
superior to the original design. In particular, the static pressure
distortion at the throat was reduced by more than a factor of five.