Reheat effect on the improvement in efficiency of the turbine driven by pulse detonation

Abstract

Due to the strong unsteadiness of pulse detonation, large flow losses are generated when the detonation wave interacts with the turbine blades, resulting in low turbine efficiency. Considering that the flow losses are dissipated into the gas as heat energy, some of them can be recycled during the expansion process in subsequent stages by the reheat effect, which should be helpful to improve the detonation-driven turbine efficiency. Taking this into account, this paper developed a numerical model of the detonation chamber coupled with a two-stage axial turbine, and a stoichiometric hydrogen-air mixture was used. The improvement in turbine efficiency attributable to the reheat effect was calculated by comparing the average efficiency of the stages with the efficiency of the two-stage turbine. The research indicated that the first stage was critical in suppressing the flow unsteadiness caused by pulse detonation, which stabilized the intake condition of the second stage and consequently allowed much of the flow losses from the first stage to be recycled, so that the efficiency of the two-stage turbine was improved. At a 95% confidence level, the efficiency improvement was stable at 4.5%–5.3%, demonstrating that the reheat effect is significant in improving the efficiency of the detonation-driven turbine.