Advanced supersonic inlet technology

Recently, relatively new analytical procedures have been successfully used to design bleed systems for mixed-compression inlets designed to operate efficiently up to Mach number 2.65. The procedures used constitute a major advance in inlet technology by offering a promising approach to attain high internal and external performance for mixed-compression inlets that operate over a large supersonic Mach number range. Unfortunately, there is a lack of data describing bleed hole performance characteristics to verify these procedures at high Mach numbers. This paper briefly discusses the analytical procedures for designing advanced inlet systems and suggests facility modifications wherein the procedures can be verified on large-scale inlet models up to approximately Mach number 4.5.