Effect of tangential swirl air inlet angle on the combustion efficiency of a hybrid powder-solid ramjet

Yihua Xu, Rui Jia, Humberto Medina, Haijun Sun

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    19 Citations (Scopus)
    250 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    A new ramjet configuration using powder and solid fuel as propellant is investigated, namely, hybrid powder-solid ramjet (HPSR). Boron particles were used as the powder in this study. In order to improve combustion efficiency of boron and simplify the engine structure, a tangential swirl air inlet is adopted on the HPSR. Ignition model based on the multi-layer oxide structure and Global reaction combustion model of boron particles, the Lagrangian particle trajectory model and the realizable k-ε turbulence model were implemented to calculate three-dimensional two-phase flow and combustion in the HPSR with the different tangential air inlet angles (0°,5°, 10°, 15°, 20°, 25°). The effects of tangential air inlet angles on the ignition and combustion of boron were analyzed. The results show that when the tangential swirl air inlet angle is 10°, the combustion efficiency of boron particles and the total combustion efficiency of engine are the highest; the temperature distribution in the second combustion chamber is uniform, and the ignition distance of particles is small, for the HPSR configuration tested.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)87-95
    Number of pages9
    JournalActa Astronautica
    Volume159
    Early online date19 Mar 2019
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jun 2019

    Bibliographical note

    NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Acta Astronautica Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Acta Astronautica, [159], (2019) DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2019.03.046

    © 2019, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

    Keywords

    • Boron
    • HPSR
    • Ignition and combustion
    • Ramjet
    • Swirl
    • Tangential air inlet angle

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Aerospace Engineering

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