Numerical Study and Performance Evaluation for a Pulse Detonation Engine with an Exhaust Nozzle (1st Report: Estimation on Performance using a Detailed Reaction Model)

Abstract

This paper presents a propulsive performance evaluation for a H2/Air pulse detonation engine (PDE) equipped with a converging-diverging exhaust nozzle. The evaluation was conducted using system-level modeling and multi-cycle numerical simulations. This study discusses two-dimensional and axisymmetric compressible Euler equations with a detailed chemical reaction model. First, the single-shot propulsive performance of a simplified-PDE (i.e., no exhaust nozzle) is evaluated to show the validity of the numerical and performance evaluation method. The influences of the initial conditions, ignition energy, grid resolution and scale effects on the propulsive performance are studied using multi-cycle simulations. The present results are compared with the results calculated by Ma et al. and Harris et al. The differences between their results and the present simulations are approximately 2–3% because their chemical reactions use a one-step model with a single-γ model. The effects of the specific heat ratio should be estimated for various nozzle configurations and flight conditions.