Influence of cavity floor injection strategy on mixing improvement study of a splitter plate-assisted supersonic combustor

Abstract

In the current research, an effort has been made to investigate the splitter plate-based scramjet combustor by inserting a cavity in the lower wall and observing how the different geometric parameters of the combustor, namely the cavity's aft wall angle, the bottom wall's divergence angle, and the splitter plate's angle of attack, affect the mixing performance of the supersonic combustor. Initially, experimental data from the published literature for a splitter plate is used to validate the implemented computational approach. Next, different aft wall angles of the cavity are compared, and the optimal value is found to be 120° The current investigation demonstrates that geometric modification significantly affects the performance of a splitter plate-assisted supersonic combustor. An increase in the cavity's aft wall angle improves the combustion efficiency. A further study is conducted on the splitter plate + cavity at various divergence angles of the bottom wall. According to our study, the separation region on the top wall increases as the divergence angle increases, resulting in a reduction in combustion performance. Finally, while simulating different angles of attack of splitter plate, it has been noticed that, for a negative angle of attack (-1°), the cavity provides a recirculation region and a sufficient shear mixing layer. This allows adequate air-fuel mixing to sustain combustion.