Effect of inlet conditions on swirling turbulent reacting flows in a solid fuel ramjet engine

Abstract This paper presents experimental and numerical investigation of turbulent reacting flows in a solid fuel ramjet engine with different inlet conditions. In simulations, three main parameters were varied independently, which are the swirl intensity, mass flow rate, and air inlet temperature to study these parameters influence on the regression rate and combustion phenomena. Firstly, a numerical model has been developed to solve axisymmetric unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations of the turbulent swirling compressible flow field with chemical reactions. Secondly, experiments have been performed on the solid fuel ramjet without swirl to validate the developed code. Thirdly, in order to assess the accuracy and robustness of the code three test cases are adopted. Finally, a series of unsteady simulations are carried out for swirling reacting turbulent flows in a solid fuel ramjet using high-density Polyethylene (HDPE) solid fuel. The main results obtained from this study show that swirl flow enhances the regression rate and the turbulent mixing throughout the ramjet. In addition, the results revealed that an increase of swirl number, mass flow rate, and air inlet temperature increases the heat and mass transport at the solid fuel surface and hence enhances the local regression rate. Three relations have been proposed to correlate the average regression rate.

[1]  D. Metzger,et al.  Measurements in turbulent swirling flow through an abrupt axisymmetric expansion , 1988 .

[2]  K. Kuo.  Principles of combustion , 1986 .

[3]  Rachid Said,et al.  Numerical Study of the Swirl Effect on a Coaxial Jet Combustor Flame Including Radiative Heat Transfer , 2009 .

[5]  D. Mishra,et al.  Computational studies of turbulent premixed flame based dump combustor , 2007 .

[6]  Jian Zhang,et al.  SIMULATION OF SWIRLING TURBULENT FLOWS AND HEAT TRANSFER IN AN ANNULAR DUCT , 2003 .

[7]  X. Xia,et al.  Analysis on transient conjugate heat transfer in gap–cavity–gap structure heated by high speed airflow , 2013 .

[8]  Dinggen Li,et al.  Combustion characteristics of a slotted swirl combustor: An experimental test and numerical validation , 2015 .

[9]  Zhichao Chen,et al.  Influence of the outer secondary air vane angle on the gas/particle flow characteristics near the do , 2011 .

[10]  G. Schulte,et al.  Fuel regression and flame stabilization studies of solid-fuel ramjets , 1986 .

[11]  B. V. Leer,et al.  Towards the ultimate conservative difference scheme V. A second-order sequel to Godunov's method , 1979 .

[12]  A. M. Tahsini.  Ignition delay time in swirling supersonic flow , 2013 .

[13]  F. Menter.  Two-equation eddy-viscosity turbulence models for engineering applications , 1994 .

[14]  R. J. Kee,et al.  Chemkin-II : A Fortran Chemical Kinetics Package for the Analysis of Gas Phase Chemical Kinetics , 1991 .

[15]  William H. Campbell.  An Experimental Investigation of the Effects of Swirling Air Flows on the Combustion Properties of a Solid Fuel Ramjet Motor. , 1985 .

[16]  Wright-Patterson Afb,et al.  Kinetic Modeling of Ethylene Oxidation in High Speed Reacting Flows , 1997 .

[17]  J. C. Dutton,et al.  Swirling supersonic nozzle flow , 1987 .

[18]  N. Gascoin,et al.  Flash Pyrolysis of High Density PolyEthylene , 2013 .

[19]  Zhi J. Wang,et al.  A block LU-SGS implicit dual time-stepping algorithm for hybrid dynamic meshes , 2003 .

[20]  R. N. Walters,et al.  Determination of the heats of gasification of polymers using differential scanning calorimetry , 2008 .

[21]  W. Malalasekera,et al.  Effects of Swirl on Intermittency Characteristics in Non-Premixed Flames , 2012 .

[22]  C. Cortés,et al.  Prediction of Flow Instabilities in an Atmospheric Low Swirl Burner Using URANS Models , 2012 .

[23]  Assaad R. Masri,et al.  Review of laboratory swirl burners and experiments for model validation , 2015 .

[24]  G. D. van Albada,et al.  A comparative study of computational methods in cosmic gas dynamics , 1982 .

[25]  Xue-Song Bai,et al.  Swirling turbulent flows in a combustion chamber with and without heat release , 2013 .

[26]  C. J. Schexnayder,et al.  Influence of Chemical Kinetics and Unmixedness on Burning in Supersonic Hydrogen Flames , 1980 .

[27]  Robert A. Baurle,et al.  A numerical and experimental investigation of a scramjet combustor for hypersonic missile applications , 1998 .

[28]  Cheng Zhu,et al.  Simulation of Swirling Turbulent Flow and Combustion in a Combustor , 2009 .

[29]  P. Korting,et al.  Combustion of polymethylmethacrylate in a solid fuel ramjet , 1990 .

[30]  P. Korting,et al.  Combustion of polyethylene in a solid fuel ramjet - A comparison of computational and experimental results , 1988 .

[31]  Chen Xiong,et al.  Prediction of swirling cold flow in a solid-fuel ramjet engine with a modified rotation/curvature correction SST turbulence model , 2016 .

[32]  R. Pein,et al.  Swirl and fuel composition effects on boron combustion in solid-fuelramjets , 1992 .

[33]  S. Oka,et al.  Experimental and numerical investigation of gaseous fuel combustion in swirl chamber , 2005 .

[34]  Oh-Hyun Rho,et al.  Methods for the accurate computations of hypersonic flows: I. AUSMPW + scheme , 2001 .

[35]  Ten-See Wang,et al.  Prediction of Confined Swirling Spray-Combusting Flows , 1994 .

[36]  David W. Netzer,et al.  Modeling Solid-Fuel Ramjet Combustion , 1977 .

[37]  W. Roberts,et al.  Investigation of the effects of quarl and initial conditions on swirling non-premixed methane flames: Flow field, temperature, and species distributions , 2016 .

[38]  S. Krishnan,et al.  Solid Fuel Ramjet Combustor Design , 1998 .

[39]  A. Gany,et al.  Investigation of a small solid fuel ramjet combustor , 1989 .

[40]  D. Rhode,et al.  Prediction of swirling reacting flow in ramjet combustors , 1981 .

[41]  David L. Marcum,et al.  Analytical study of swirler effects in annular propulsive nozzles , 1987 .

[42]  S. Vanka,et al.  Application of Laser Velocimetry for Characterization of Confined Swirling Flow , 1988 .

[43]  H. Lehr,et al.  Experiments on Shock-Induced Combustion , 1972 .

[44]  Omer Musa.  Verification Study of a CFD-RANS Code for Turbulent Flow at High Reynolds Numbers , 2016 .

[45]  Zhaofeng Tian,et al.  CFD Simulations of Turbulent Flows in a Twin Swirl Combustor by RANS and Hybrid RANS/LES Methods☆ , 2015 .

[46]  Jian Zhang,et al.  Simulation of Turbulent Reacting Flow in a Swirl Combustor , 2007 .

[47]  A. Hoegl,et al.  Measurement in a solid fuel ramjet combustion with swirl , 1988 .