Abstract: Severe aerothermal heating loads are commonly encountered on the V-shaped cowl lips of three-dimensional inward-turning inlets. To reveal the effects of the geometry parameters on the aerothermal heating loads, a simplified model called V-shaped blunt leading edge is employed, and numerical simulations and shock tunnel experiments are performed at a freestream Mach number of 6. The results indicate that with the combined effects of the R/r (i.e., the crotch rounding radius R to the blunt radius r) and the half-span angle β, three types of shock reflections are generated at the crotches, leading to obvious differences in the position and intensity of the heating peaks on the wall. In the geometric parameter space (R/r, β), the regular reflection occurs at the crotch when R/r and β are small. The supersonic jet impingement near the stagnation point causes the first type of central heating peak, which can reach up to 12 times stagnation heat flux of a cylinder with the same r. For larger parameter values of R/r and β, the Mach reflection occurs at the crotch. The collision of the robust jets and the shock wave/boundary layer interactions result in the second type of central heating peaks and outermost heating peaks, respectively, and these peaks are less than the first type of central heating peaks. An intensity transition criterion between the second type of central heating peaks and outermost heating peaks is established in terms of R/r and β. When R/r is large enough, the regular reflection from the same family occurs at the crotch. Correspondingly, both the second type of central heating peaks and outermost heating peaks decrease significantly.