Experimental and numerical study of solid rocket scramjet combustor equipped with combined cavity and strut device

Abstract

In this paper, a new solid rocket scramjet equipped with two combined cavity and strut device was studied by experimental and numerical approaches. The experiment simulated a flight Mach number 5.5 at 23 km. Hydrocarbon type fuel was used as the solid fuel-rich propellant. Three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations coupled with shear stress transport k−ω turbulence model are employed to simulate the flow field in the solid rocket scramjet combustor. The numerical method was validated by experimental data. The experimental results show that the combined cavity and strut device can play a role as ignition and flame holding in the solid rocket scramjet combustor. Additionally, the numerical results show that the combustion of gas and particle phase is conducted sequentially rather than simultaneously. And the total combustion efficiency mainly depends on the particle combustion. The total combustion efficiency is about 0.7 and the total pressure recovery is about 0.25 in this test. The combined cavity and strut device do improve the combustion efficiency in the solid rocket scramjet. However, the total pressure recovery is a rather low. Aerodynamic configuration optimization of the combined cavity and strut device will be carried out in the next step.