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The Experimental Study about the Effect of Operating Conditions on Multi-tube Pulse Detonation Engine Performance

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Abstract

This study examines a multi-tube pulse detonation engine (PDE) which has a type of constant volume combustion. We designed and made the multi-tube PDE and then conducted an experiment in various operating frequencies and equivalence ratios. First, experiments with operating frequencies of 40, 80, 120, 160, and 200 Hz resulted in an average thrust and specific impulse 23.14 N and 42.34 s. The next experiment resulted in the equivalence ratio varying from 0.81 to 1.38, which resulted in an average thrust and specific impulse 22.36 N and 40.11 s. The average detonation velocity was 8% lower than that calculated according to C–J theory. The incidence ratios of the detonation wave were stable with the exception of the operating frequency of 200 Hz. However, at 200 Hz, the incidence ratio was less than 50%. We assumed that a low fill fraction occurred for this problem. The thrust of the PDE increased with the operating frequency. However, the thrust increase was at a lower rate than in previous studies, because of a lost thrust output result from the slow response time of the load cell amplifier.

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Abbreviations

t :

Time

\(\tau \) :

Angle percentage occupied at \(360^{\circ }\)

f :

Operating frequency

\(\dot{{m}}\) :

Mass flow rate

P :

Absolute pressure

R :

Gas constant

A :

Cross sectional area

T :

Kelvin temperature

\(\gamma \) :

Specific heat ratio

\(\varPhi \) :

Equivalence ratio

V :

Volume

\(\varPsi \) :

Fill fraction

F :

Thrust

I :

Impulse

\(I\_{\mathrm{sp}}\) :

Specific impulse

g :

Gravitational acceleration

\({\epsilon }\) :

Incidence ratio

N :

Number of times

\(\hbox {supply}\) :

In time of supply condition

\(\hbox {oper}\) :

Operating condition

\(\hbox {tank}\) :

Reservoir tank

\(\hbox {a}\) :

Ambient condition

0:

Total condition

\(\hbox {x}\) :

Any chemical species

\(\hbox {tot}\) :

In case of total time

\(\hbox {f}\) :

Fuel

\(\hbox {o}\) :

Oxidizer

\(\hbox {stoic}\) :

Stoichiometry

\(\hbox {tube}\) :

Tube of combustor

\(\hbox {cyc}\) :

Per a one cycle

\(\hbox {avg}\) :

Time averaged

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Acknowledgements

This work was carried out with support from the Space Core Technology Research Grants (NRF-2013M1A3A3A02042430) of the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea, which was funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) of the Korean Government. It was also supported in part by the Advanced Research Center Program (NRF-2013R1A5A1073861) of the NRF, which is funded by the MSIP contracted through the Advanced Space Propulsion Research Center at Seoul National University.

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  1. Pusan National University, Busan, 46241, Republic of Korea

    Jung-Min Kim, Hyung-Seok Han & Jeong-Yeol Choi

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  1. Jung-Min Kim
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  2. Hyung-Seok Han
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  3. Jeong-Yeol Choi
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Correspondence to Jeong-Yeol Choi.

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An earlier version of this paper was presented at APISAT 2017, Seoul, Korea, October 2017.

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Kim, JM., Han, HS. & Choi, JY. The Experimental Study about the Effect of Operating Conditions on Multi-tube Pulse Detonation Engine Performance. JASS 19, 89–99 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42405-018-0026-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42405-018-0026-2

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