R&D on Hydrocarbon-fueled RBCC Engines for a TSTO Launch Vehicle

Abstract

Combination of a air-breathing engines and rocket engines (termed as Rocket BasedCombined Cycle engine) gives an opportunity to reduce onboard oxygen consumption and to increase system weight margins for various application from cruiser to launch vehicles. For launch vehicle applications, combination of a ramjet/scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) flow-pass with embedded rocket engines was proposed (termed as Rocket-Ramjet Combined Cycle engine, T. Kanda, et. al., JPP, 19(2003), 859), and related R&D activities are undergoing at Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Kakuda Space Center targeting hydrogen as the fuel due to its high Isp and cooling performances. Use of hydrogen fuel, on the other hand, can be costly due to the fuel cost and difficult-to-handle nature of liquefied hydrogen. Thus, hydrocarbon fuel such as ethanol was under consideration for the application to the future reusable launch vehicles termed as the 'reference system,' targeting manned operation to LEO. This presentation is to show the status of system analysis, flight demonstration plan, and related research efforts. Nomenclature AOA = angle of attack D = vehicle drag Fth = thrust Isp, Isp e = specific impulse, effective specific impulse O/F = rocket chamber mixture mass ratio p, P = static pressure, total pressure q = dynamic pressure W = weight X = streamwise location  = equivalence ratio Subscripts: a = airflow f = fuel p, p1 = propellant, propellant on booster stage r = rocket to = at take off 0 = at freestream or stagnant conditions

A survey on the conceptual design of hypersonic aircraft powered by RBCC engine

“…The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has made a long-term research target of a fully reusable TSTO vehicle whose booster and upper stage vehicle both have wings. [57][58][59] To this end, JAXA has proposed two kinds of boosters using different types of engines: boosters powered by rocket engines and boosters powered by air-breathing engines. Figure 39 depicts the configuration of the vehicle.…”

Study on the Ignition Method for n-Octane Pyrolysis Fuel in a Scramjet Engine

“…For example, much research in recent years has focused on scramjet engines using hydrocarbon fuels. [4][5][6] Hydrocarbon fuel is selected as a propellant for good packing into airplane-like vehicle shapes because the fuel tank becomes compact in size. 5) Hydrocarbon liquid fuel at room temperature has an advantage that an integral tank can be incorporated in the hypersonic vehicle.…”

Arrangement of Rocket Engine Location in a Combined Cycle Engine

“…10) Recently, as for RBCC, various (theoretical, experimental, numerical, conceptual, and so on) studies have been made especially in United States, 11) China, 12) and Japan. 13) Most of their attention, however, were directed to the intrinsic RBCC, that is, the embeddedly configured RBCC. Thus, our new concept, that is, separately configured RBCC (Fig.…”