Study on a Four-Cylinder Pulse Detonation Rocket Engine with a Coaxial High Frequency Rotary Valve

Abstract

Thrust measurement experiment was carried out using a four-cylinder pulse detonation rocket engine (PDRE) with a rotary valve. The PDRE uses three types of gases, oxidizer, fuel, and purge gas to generate detonation wave intermittently and produces thrust. We used a rotary valve attached coaxially to a motor for supplying these three gases intermittently. The mechanism of the rotary valve is very simple. It is built up with a top cover, a rotating disk, and a casing, and has advantage to enable high mass flow rate and high frequency operation. The oxidizer was N 2 O, the fuel was ethylene, and the purge gas was He. In the operation time for 1000 msec with C 2 H 4 -N 2 O propellant, we achieved time-averaged thrust of 258.5 N and specific impulse of 138.7 sec. Nomenclature f M = motor operation frequency f PDE = 1 PDE cycle frequency per tube f D = detonation generating frequency f exp = experimental operation frequency I sp = propellant-based experimental specific impulse m i = purge gas mass flow rate m p = propellant mass flow rate p s,i = purge gas supply pressure p s,p = propellant supply pressure t ope = operation time  = equivalent ratio  p = propellant fill fraction  p,i = propellant and purge gas fill fraction  = rotation angle of rotating disc Subscripts i = purge gas p = propellant s = supply

Review on Recent Advances in Pulse Detonation Engines

“…Their experimental results demonstrate that the frequency of the temperature and pressure is the same and their device is able to capture every pulse detonation quickly and precisely. Thrust measurement experiment was carried out by Morozumi et al [73] using a four-cylinder pulse detonation engine with rotary valve. Their experimental results achieved time averaged thrust of 258.5 N and specific impulse of 138.7 s. The detailed reactive detonation combustion flow features are experimentally investigated by Zitoun and Desbordes [74].…”

Experimental research on operation performance and acoustic behavior of two-phase dual-tube pulse detonation engine

“…The results showed that the UAV with dual-tube pulse detonation engine could obtain higher flight speed. Morozumi et al 7,8 have achieved the time-averaged thrust of 258.5 N and specific impulse of 138.7 s by using a four-cylinder pulse detonation rocket engine with a rotary valve. Zhang et al 9 have developed an air-breathing PDE model with six tubes of 200 mm diameter and 1500 mm total length.…”