Abstract: To deal with the low total pressure recovery rate and the high distortion level of serpentine inlets designed with the traditional method, a novel design concept of serpentine inlets based on surface vortex controlled global secondary flow reconstruction is presented in this paper. The simulation validation for the concept shows that:1) the vortex-controlled model successfully alleviates the large separation occurring on the top surface of the baseline model, which is because the vortex induced by the vortex-controlled design rotates in a direction opposite to that of the baseline vortex responsible for the separation; 2) the vortex-controlled model reduces circumferential distortion (as calculated by the DC₆₀ descriptor) by 76% while improving the total pressure recovery by 0.84%. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the vortex-controlled design concept for serpentine inlets.

Key words: aerospace propulsion system, serpentine inlet, vortex-controlled design concept, vortex dynamics, streamwise vorticity, secondary flow, flow separation