1. Introduction
High Mach number vehicles possess advantages such as high speed, strong penetration capability, good stealth, and rapid deployment, offering significant benefits and application prospects in many fields [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5]. As a critical technology in the design of high Mach number vehicles, the integrated design of waverider forebody/inlet has become a current research focus [
6,
7,
8].
Using a waverider as the forebody of a high Mach number vehicle can achieve pre-compression of the incoming flow, thereby improving the inlet’s flow coefficient and total pressure recovery coefficient, as well as enhancing the vehicle’s lift-to-drag ratio [
9]. Depending on the reference flow field, the waverider has evolved through several stages: wedge waverider, cone-derived waverider, wedge-cone waverider, osculating-cone waverider, osculating axisymmetric waverider, and osculating flowfield waverider. As waverider theory has developed, its geometric configuration and aerodynamic flow field have become increasingly complex, adding to the challenges of integrating the waverider forebody and inlet. Simultaneously, high Mach number inlets have transitioned from two-dimensional to three-dimensional designs. Current inlet configurations primarily include two-dimensional planar compression inlet, axisymmetric inlet, sidewall compression inlet, and three-dimensional inward-turning inlet. This trend towards complexity and diversity demands greater adaptability and flexibility in integration methods [
10].
In the conceptual design phase of high Mach number vehicles, efficiently conducting forebody/inlet integrated design is crucial [
11]. A flexible, adjustable, and efficient integration method can shorten the development cycle and enhance the iteration speed of design schemes. Numerous researchers have already studied the integrated design of waverider forebody/inlet. Li et al. applied the osculating cone waverider theory to propose a dual-waverider integrated configuration, integrating pre-designed 3D shock waves with the shape of the inward-turning inlet exit, improving the lift-to-drag ratio of the body and the air intake performance of the inlet [
7]. Ding et al. generated an integrated configuration including the body, wings, and inlet directly based on cone-derived reference flow fields and validated the method’s effectiveness through numerical calculations [
12]. These studies demonstrate that integration based on reference flow fields can produce configurations with excellent aerodynamic performance and controllable flow fields. However, the design process requires reverse-designing geometric surfaces based on coupled internal and external flow fields, making integrated design challenging. Wang et al. used the Class Shape Transformation (CST) parameterization method to develop a wing-body integrated shape with a high lift-to-drag ratio and uniform inlet flow field [
13]. Alkaya et al. designed a high Mach number transport aircraft featuring a Sears-Haack body and supercritical airfoil from the perspective of the conceptual design process [
14]. This approach supports designing a vehicle that meets specified requirement by proposing a new integrated shape, considering various factors such as aerodynamics and layout. However, this process is time-consuming and challenging to generalize for new design requirement. To overcome the low precision of data-driven optimization and the difficulty of extending geometric parameterization methods to complex configurations, Fu et al. proposed a global search multi-objective optimization framework. This framework uses directly extracted vehicle parameters to optimize a two-dimensional high Mach number forebody/inlet [
15]. Zhang et al. introduced a multidisciplinary performance analysis model, completing the multidisciplinary optimization of an X-43a-like vehicle, including aerodynamics, propulsion, and stealth, based on 86 design parameters using a concurrent subspace optimization method [
16]. The current parameterization methods for integrated configuration optimization require an initial rough design, inadvertently increasing the workload of iterative optimization.
Through the analysis of the above studies, it is evident that the current research on waverider forebody/inlet integration faces several issues. Most studies overlook the geometric integration of the forebody and inlet, typically relying on manual adjustments to construct integrated Computer-Aided Design (CAD) model, resulting in suboptimal geometric characteristics. The design process often involves complex aerodynamic calculations for reverse integration, making the coupled design of the forebody and inlet challenging. Integrated design needs to consider multiple factors such as aerodynamics, thermal protection, and layout, leading to lengthy design cycles. Additionally, the integrated geometric model requires a preliminary modeling followed by parameterization, which reduces the efficiency of iterative reconstruction.
To address the aforementioned issues, this paper proposes an Integrated waverider forebody/inlet Fusion method based on Discrete point cloud reconstruction (IFD). This method connects and fits the discrete point cloud generated from the geometric model using parametric curves, thereby resolving the geometric integration problem. It provides a means to decouple the design of the forebody and inlet, reducing the complexity of integrated design. During the construction of the integrated forebody/inlet shape, this method allows flexible adjustments of the discrete scheme based on time constraints and geometric information, achieving controllable shape construction cycles and precision. The final shape can be adjusted and optimized by performing operations such as displacement and reduction on the discrete point cloud, simplifying the complexity of shape adjustments and optimization. The simulation results of the integrated reconstruction model of the waverider forebody and inward-turning inlet validate the reasonableness, practicality, and superiority of this method.