Research Summaries

Back Development of Low-Loss Engine Inlets for Rotating Detonation Engines

Fiscal Year 2017
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Investigator(s) Brophy, Christopher M.
Sponsor Office of Naval Research (Navy)
Summary Recent developments in the operation and evaluation of Rotating Detonation Engines (RDE) has revealed that many of the advantages of pressure gain combustion may be deliverable by RDE systems if careful attention is provided to engine inlet design. Results previously reported to ONR from past development efforts have shown that pressure gain is likely achievable with a practical system once engine inlet design is understood such that a well-mixed fuel/air mixture can be delivered to an RDE combustor while maintaining a low total pressure drop and also prevent the unstart of a supersonic intake and/or a final compressor stage. The proposed effort will continue to explore the hypermixer design previously reported in an effort to apply the approach to liquid hydrocarbon fuels and determine how the proven mixing characteristics can be extrapolated to larger annular gaps required for high thrust per unit area flow systems. Passive wall treatments will also be characterized experimentally to determine if the favorable properties observed computationally, result in the adequate suppression of forward-running pressure waves which could result in an undesirable vehicle inlet unstart scenario.
Keywords Mixing Performance Rotating Detonation Engines
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal