Design and Objectives of the Air-breathing Propulsion Experiment Technology Demonstrator (APEX-TD)

Ramjets and Scramjets are possible alternatives for next generation high-speed flight with air-breathing propulsion system and alternative access-to-space. APEX-TD is a DLR low-cost flight experiment designed for investigating essential technologies for such propulsion concepts and provide real flight data for verification of numerical simulations and experiment data. The flight was launched on-top of the single-stage Red Kite sounding rocket motor during its qualification flight on the 13th November 2023 in Andøya, Norway. The main characteristic of the experiment was a supersonic axial-symmetric inlet with internal flow path and an active starting mechanism for a design Mach number of 5. During the flight a maximal Mach number of 4.8 was reached. As key technologies for scramjet combustion 3D printed looped strut injectors with nitrogen injection could be tested. Further features were ceramic structures integrated in vehicle components with high aerothermal loads and a dedicated instrumentation of the external and internal flow path. This paper gives an overview of the design concept of the vehicle, experimental set-up and configuration as well as scientific objectives of the APEX-TD experiment in general. It also provides results of first analysis of the flight trajectory and scientific data collected during the flight.