Hot gas environment around STOVL aircraft in ground proximity—Part 2: Numerical study

Ingestion of hot exhaust gases by the engines of Short Take-off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) aircraft has been an important research problem for several years. The hot gas environment around STOVL aircraft is three-dimensional and turbulent. In this study, the Navier-Stokes equations governing the hot gas ingestion flowfield are solved by an efficient finite-difference calculation procedure. The complete geometry, including the head wind and the fuselage, is simulated. Four demonstration calculations with variations in the height of the fuselage and the head wind velocity are presented. It is shown that the calculation procedure efficiently provides a solution to the governing equations, and produces realistic descriptions of the flowfield and temperature field.