Experimental investigation of the effect of the air inlet angle and the combustion pressure in a ducted rocket combustor

Abstract

The scope of the study is to evaluate the combustion efficiency of a ducted rocket combustor operating at different conditions, using a connected-pipe testing setup. An experimental parametric investigation was conducted to evaluate the effect of the inlet air-injection angles and the effect of the combustion pressure for different fuel-to-air ratios. The experimental results indicate that best energetic performance was obtained for an injection angle of 120°, i. e., against the main flow direction. The reason is that this way better mixing was obtained and the residence time increased. Characteristic velocity was found to decrease with decreasing the combustion pressure.