This study was undertaken in response to a request by the U.S. Air Force that the National Research Council (NRC) examine whether the technologies that underlie the concept of a hypersonic, air-launched, air-breathing, hydrocarbon-fueled missile with speeds up to Mach 81 can be demonstrated in time to be initially operational by 2015. To conduct the study, the NRC appointed the Committee on Review and Evaluation of the Air Force Hypersonic Technology Program, under the auspices of the Air Force Science and Technology Board.

In the aviation field there is great interest in high-speed vehicle design. Hypersonic vehicles represent the next frontier of passenger transportation to and from space. However, several design issues must be addressed, including vehicle aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics, aeroshape design optimization, aerodynamic heating, boundary layer transition, and so on. This book contains valuable contributions focusing on hypervelocity aircraft design. Topics covered include hypersonic aircraft aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic design, especially aeroshape design optimization, computational fluid dynamics, and scramjet propulsion. The book also discusses high-speed flow issues and the challenges to achieving the dream of affordable hypersonic travel. It is hoped that the information contained herein will allow for the development of safe and efficient hypersonic vehicles.

Turbulent reactive flows are of common occurrance in combustion engineering, chemical reactor technology and various types of engines producing power and thrust utilizing chemical and nuclear fuels. Pollutant formation and dispersion in the atmospheric environment and in rivers, lakes and ocean also involve interactions between turbulence, chemical reactivity and heat and mass transfer processes. Considerable advances have occurred over the past twenty years in the understanding, analysis, measurement, prediction and control of turbulent reactive flows. Two main contributors to such advances are improvements in instrumentation and spectacular growth in computation: hardware, sciences and skills and data processing software, each leading to developments in others. Turbulence presents several features that are situation-specific. Both for that reason and a number of others, it is yet difficult to visualize a so-called solution of the turbulence problem or even a generalized approach to the problem. It appears that recognition of patterns and structures in turbulent flow and their study based on considerations of stability, interactions, chaos and fractal character may be opening up an avenue of research that may be leading to a generalized approach to classification and analysis and, possibly, prediction of specific processes in the flowfield. Predictions for engineering use, on the other hand, can be foreseen for sometime to come to depend upon modeling of selected features of turbulence at various levels of sophistication dictated by perceived need and available capability.

This book contains the original peer-reviewed research papers presented at the 6th China Aeronautical Science and Technology Conference held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, China, in September 2023. Topics covered include but are not limited to Navigation/Guidance and Control Technology, Aircraft Design and Overall Optimisation of Key Technologies, Aviation Testing Technology, Airborne Systems/Electromechanical Technology, Structural Design, Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics, Advanced Aviation Materials and Manufacturing Technology, Advanced Aviation Propulsion Technology, and Civil Aviation Transportation. The papers presented here share the latest findings in aviation science and technology, making the book a valuable resource for researchers, engineers and students in related fields.