Experimental Research on Thrust Performance of Rotating Detonation Engine with Liquid Ethanol and Gaseous Oxygen

Rotating detonation combustor (RDC) is one of the combustors using detonation waves, which are hypersonic combustion waves, and is expected to simplify the system and improve thermal efficiency due to their hypersonic combustion and compression performance by shock waves. Most of these studies use gas propellants, and liquid propellants are rarely used. Since liquid propellants are used in many combustors such as aircraft engines, it is important to evaluate the performance of RDC with liquid propellants. In this study, a cylindrical RDC, which is an RDC without inner cylinder, with a liquid ethanol and gaseous oxygen was tested at a mass flow rate of 31.3 ± 3.2 g/s, an equivalent ratio of 0.46-1.42 ± 0.12, a back pressure of 13.2 ± 0.9 kPa, and fuel injector with 24×φ0.2 or 6×φ0.4 to evaluate the performance and visualize the inside of the combustion chamber. As a result, when fuel injector was 24×φ0.2, detonation waves were observed, and high propagation velocity and high thrust performance were achieved. From the internal self-luminous and CH* radicals visualization from side wall, a circumferential DDT (deflagration to detonation transition) was observed. In addition, it was found that the detonation wave lifted about 2-3 mm from the combustor bottom, the main combustion region was occurred at 20 mm from the bottom, and the combustion region, including the main combustion region, requires about 50-70 mm from the bottom, which is correlated with the internal pressure, brightness distributions, and the image of acrylic damage. When fuel injector was 6×φ0.4, transition of detonation wave was not observed. The deflagration wave lifted about 10 mm, main combustion occurred up to 45 mm, and partial combustion continued to more downstream compared to detonation combustion. Acrylic damage began to occur downstream from the area with the highest pressure and brightness.