Gasdynamic Inlet Isolation in Rotating Detonation Engine

The Rotating Detonation Engine (RDE) concept represents the next-generation of detonation-based engines as it provides higher performance and near constant thrust with a simpler overall design. Since RDE systems are in the early stage of development, the physics of engine design is yet to be fully understood and developed. A critical concern of these systems is the practical isolation of the reactant injection manifold and supply system from the combustor pressure oscillations. For this study, the gasdynamic conditions that existed at the combustor inlet are investigated and characterized. Using a shocktube test case for a Hydrogen-Air mixture, various numerical schemes, number of chemical reactions, mesh topology and mesh refinement are first investigated to reliable reproduce the Chapman-Jouguet conditions. It was found that explicit 4th Order Runge-kutta scheme using structured mesh topology, 18 species and 9 reactions with a maximum mesh cell size of 0.05 mm was required to reproduce the Chapman-Jouguet conditions. Once the suitable parameters were identified, a full 2D RDE simulation was carried out to characterize the gasdynamic inlet conditions.