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Experimental results for 25-mm and 51-mm rotating detonation rocket engine combustors

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Abstract

An ongoing rotating detonation rocket engine program is investigating the influence of combustor annulus radii on RDRE operating characteristics with flat-faced impinging injectors. To facilitate the isolation of all but the radius of curvature effects in the experiments, the annular gap was kept constant at 5 mm in combustors having either 25-mm or 51-mm outer diameter. The mixing processes were kept similar by utilizing injectors with the same net injector-to-annular gap area ratio (AR = 0.11), same radial separation distance of the orifices, and same center-of-gap impingement distance from the front-end wall. The wave dynamics, plenum pressure, and axial pressure profiles in these RDREs were compared over the mass flux and equivalence ratio ranges of \(80{-}400\,\text {kg/s/m}^{2}\) and 0.26\(-\)2.6, respectively, with gaseous methane–oxygen propellant. Experiments showed that stable one-wave operation would occur in the 25-mm RDRE at most mass fluxes where stable two-wave operation was established in the 51-mm RDRE. Stable one-wave operation with a single counter-rotating wave was maintained in the 51-mm RDRE at mass fluxes of \(240\,\text {kg/s/m}^{2}\) and below. Under these fueling conditions in the 25-mm RDRE, a counter-rotating wave also appeared while it operated with a single dominant wave. The wave spin speeds were typically 20–40% less than the Chapman–Jouguet detonation speed of the propellant and depended only on mass flux and wave number rather than the annulus diameter.

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Acknowledgements

Experiment assistance was provided by: Mark Ikeda, David Menn, Daniela Nankova, Noah Inahara, Tharun Sanker, and Lien Chang. Consultations with Bill Hargus and John Bennewitz from AFRL were greatly appreciated. This work was supported by AFOSR Grant FA 9550-18-1-9-0076 with Chiping Li as program manager.

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    1. William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Washington, 3940 Benton Lane, Seattle, 98195-2400, WA, USA

      C. Knowlen, T. Mundt & M. Kurosaka

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    1. C. Knowlen
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    Correspondence to C. Knowlen.

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    This paper is based on work that was presented at the 28th International Colloquium on the Dynamics of Explosions and Reactive Systems (ICDERS), Naples, Italy, June 19–24, 2022.

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    Knowlen, C., Mundt, T. & Kurosaka, M. Experimental results for 25-mm and 51-mm rotating detonation rocket engine combustors. Shock Waves 33, 237–252 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00193-023-01120-x

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