Inlet drag prediction for aircraft conceptual design

A research effort aimed at enhancing ACSYNT, a computer program for aircraft conceptual design, has necessitated the development of methods for predicting inlet drag. Originally, the drag of only one inlet type, the variable-geometry conical inlet, could be calculated within ACSYNT. This prompted the present research which resulted in the creation of a modular suite of subroutines that extend the capability of ACSYNT. Using this new source code, ACSYNT can now predict the drag of subsonic and supersonic pitot inlets, fixed- and variable-geometry conical inlets, and two-dimensional supersonic inlets.

Even though the requirement of computational efficiency has necessitated that many simplifications be made in the analysis, the drag calculations have a sound physical basis. The semi-empirical methods have been extracted from a number of sources based on an extensive literature survey, and these have been enhanced to encompass the full range of inlet operating conditions. The effectiveness of the methods has been demonstrated by comparing some results of the predictions to published data.