Thread by @DrChrisCombs

Came across a ram/scramjet review paper from the Stanford Center for Turbulence Research & it is an absolute treasure trove of wonderful illustrations related to hypersonics

A quick thread of my favorites, but first I got distracted w this simulation of scramjet combustion

Here’s a closer look at that animation, with links to the paper and YouTube source

What you’re seeing is an overlay of temperature, density gradient (analogous to schlieren), and velocity in a scramjet cavity at Mach 6.5

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📄 web.stanford.edu/group/ctr/ResB…

So back to the review paper, a bunch of these figures caught my attention

First up since we’re already on scramjets, a great illustration of a combined-cycle turboramjet + dual-mode scramjet

Gets you from takeoff to Mach 10!

📄 annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114…

A schematic of the HIFiRE-2 scramjet configuration with lots of great technical specs/details

Similarly, this is the HyShot-2 cavity

On a more fundamental level, this is a great overview of the engineering/physics challenges related to hypersonic flight for air-breathing propulsion systems

A related summary for tactical boost-glide systems—notice the similarities? And the differences?

Last but certainly not least, this is an excellent figure highlighting the differences in flight profiles and trajectories of a variety of systems, from cruise missiles to ballistics to traditional LEO rocket launches