Numerical simulations of vapor kerosene/air rotating detonation engines with different slot inlet configurations

Abstract

To investigate the effects of slot inlet configurations on premixed vapor kerosene/air rotating detonation engines, a series of cases with different injection patterns, including baseline inlet, outer slot inlet, middle slot inlet, and inner slot inlet, are simulated by solving three-dimensional reactive Euler equations. Stable rotating detonation waves were obtained in the baseline and the outer slot inlet cases. Instead, an unsteady triple-wave mode was obtained in the middle slot inlet case and a decoupled detonation was observed in the inner slot inlet case. A long supersonic injection zone was observed in the outer slot inlet case and the main total pressure loss was found in the buffer zone. The propagation mechanism analysis demonstrates the crucial role of the outer wall in the propagation of rotating detonation waves, where the detonation waves near the outer wall tend to be over-driven and contributes to the stable propagation of detonations. A positive mass average total pressure gain of 48.0% was obtained in the baseline, confirming the total pressure gain ability of the kerosene/air rotating detonation engines. The simulation results indicate the area ratio between the outlet and the inlet is of great importance for obtaining the positive total pressure gain.