Experimental and numerical study of the rotating detonation engine in hydrogen-air mixtures

Abstract

Experimental and numerical study of rotating detonation is presented. The experimental study is focused on the evaluation of the geometry of the detonation chamber and the conditions at which the rotating detonation can propagate in cylindrical channels. Lean hydrogen air mixtures were tested in the experiments. The pressure measured at di¨erent locations was used to check the detonative nature of combustion. Also, the relationship between detonation velocity and operation conditions is analyzed in the paper. The experimental study is accompanied with numerical analysis. The paper brie §y presents the results of two-dimensional (2D) numerical simulation of detonative combustion. The detonating mixture is created by mixting hydrogen with air. The air is injected axially to the chamber and hydrogen is injected through the inner wall of the chamber in radial direction. Application of proper injection conditions (pressure and nozzle area) allows establishing a stable rotating detonation like in the experiments. The detonation can be sustained for some range of conditions which are studied herein. The analysis of mean parameters of the process is provided as well. The numerical simulation results agree well with the experiments.

Experimental investigation on detonation combustion patterns of hydrogen/vitiated air within annular combustor

“…It is seen that both the high-frequency pressures from the PCB2 and PCB3 oscillate regularly. The sequences of a1-b1, a2-b2 and a3-b3 show obvious regularity, which is consistent with the characteristics of CRDW as reported by many researchers [2,17,19,20,23,24].…”

“…CRD has been investigated widely in recent years, including in Russia [5][6][7][8][9], the USA [3,[10][11][12][13], France [14][15][16], Poland [2,17,18], China [4,[19][20][21][22] and so on. Two propagation modes of CRDW, referred as homo-rotating mode and hetero-rotating mode here, were found in experiments.…”

“…Two propagation modes of CRDW, referred as homo-rotating mode and hetero-rotating mode here, were found in experiments. In the homo-rotating mode [6,17,19,23,24], all the CRDW(s) propagate in the same direction. In the hetero-rotating mode [14,23,25,26], one couple of detonation waves (or more) propagate in opposite directions; thereby, they collide with each other periodically.…”

Study of detonation initiation in kerosene–oxidizer mixtures in short tubes

“…The study began with oxygen as the oxidizer for the smallest tube diameter of 24.5 mm. The choice of this value was dictated by the width of the detonation chamber obtained from previous research on rotating detonation using hydrogen as the fuel and air as the oxidizer [26]. Measurements in the smallest tube were conducted with only two pressure sensors, located about 500 mm from each other.…”

“…Therefore, it was decided to use the direct injection of liquid fuel (without pre-evaporation) into the test tube to fully reflect what occurs in a real combustion chamber. More information on the design and concept of an RDE chamber can be found in the papers [8,26].…”