Experimental investigation on a rotating detonation combustor with the pulse operating frequency of 10 Hz

Abstract

The rotating detonation rocket engine has certain advantages in propulsion performance and is expected to develop into a new type of attitude/orbit control power device. In this paper, an experimental investigation on the detonation propagation characteristics during the short-time pulse operating process of rotating detonation combustor (RDC) was performed. A 60-mm RDC was employed, and the H2 and oxygen-rich air were used as the reactant. The results show that the experiment can successfully achieve rotating detonation mode when the RDC is operating with a 10-Hz pulse frequency. With the increase of oxidizer mass flow rate, the velocity and pressure of the detonation wave will increase. The average propagation frequency of the detonation wave shows a trend of first increasing and then slightly decreasing as increasing the equivalence ratio. There is a large velocity fluctuation in the RDC pulse operation, and the stability of the detonation wave is significantly affected by the equivalence ratio. The propagation velocity and stability of the detonation wave can be improved by increasing the supply mass flow rate or equivalence ratio with a certain condition. When the equivalence ratio is larger than 0.7, the establishment time of the detonation wave is less than 1 ms, which can meet the requirement of the fast response when the RDC is applied to attitude control engine.