Multiphase flow modeling and analysis of filling process for pulsed detonation engines
Abstract
The filling process of a pulsed detonation engine with fuel and oxidizer should be carried out quickly in order to maintain a high frequency of operation. The objectives of this research were to model an efficient inlet system for filling the detonation tube with fuel/air mixture in stoichiometric ratio and to evaluate various filling schemes. Numerical modeling of the filling process was done using PointwiseTM for meshing and FluentTM as the flow solver, solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with a k-ε turbulence model. Five different filling configurations were studied, including endwall, normal and angled, opposing and staggered sidewall. The fuel choices were biogas, hydrogen, methane, propane and octane all in the gaseous state. Oxidizer considered was air. The reactants were injected pre-mixed with an equivalence ratio of unity, at different velocities into a tube initially filled with ambient air at standard conditions. The benchmark was when the tube was 90 percent filled. It was found that staggered sidewall injection was the best configuration for rapidly filling the tube.