Modelling of high-speed engine flows using a space-marching method

Abstract

A computationally efficient mathematical model was developed to analyze high-speed engine flows. The inlet and nozzle flows were modelled using the space-marching method to automatically solve the shock reflection and nozzle plume flow. The combustor flow was treated using a quasi-one-dimensional model that considered the rise in pressure of the isolator owing to the shock train. The resulting model was compared with the experimental results. Three test cases were used to validate the model's accuracy: 1) a hydrogen-fuelled combustor experiment, 2) an integrated inlet/combustor configuration experiment, and 3) a single-expansion-ramp nozzle flow experiment. The results showed that the space-marching method predicted the pressure profiles of the inlet flow and nozzle plume flow with reasonable accuracy. The computational time for the inlet and nozzle flows merely takes several minutes on a CPU with 3.6 GHz. The quasi-one-dimensional model calculated the fuel ignition and pressure rise in the combustor with a high computational efficiency of several seconds. The integration of the space-marching method and quasi-one-dimensional method can be developed as a powerful tool for fast evaluations of high-speed engine performance.