Experimental Approaches for Obtaining a Temporally and Spatially Averaged Representative Static Pressure for Unsteady and Non-Uniform Combustor Conditions
Abstract
Detonation-based combustors are an attractive alternative to traditional deflagration-based combustors for airbreathing propulsion systems. Rotating Detonation Engines (RDEs) are a type of detonation-based combustion system that offers some attractive features for the warfighter, namely a reduced combustor volume and the potential for increased thermodynamic efficiency. However, characterizing RDE performance has proven difficult due to the transient nature of detonation conditions. To date, the RDE community has agreed that the equivalent available pressure (EAP) is the standard performance metric, but this value is difficult to implement experimentally. The effective nozzle entrance static pressure, typically measured with a static capillary tube average pressure (CTAP) probe, has shown promise as an adequate surrogate to the instrument-intensive EAP measurement; however, CTAP measurement challenges, such as static pressure azimuthal variability within the RDE, remain. An apparatus was designed and analyzed that could provide a defendable spatially and temporally average static pressure measurement representative of the average static pressure for a given plane within an operating RDE or any unsteady combustor. The design, called a pressure-averaging device (PAD), was characterized via ANSYS Fluent and resulted in a finalized design that was able to both spatially and temporally average static pressure across several different fluidic boundary conditions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2021
- Accession Number
- AD1150842
Entities
People
- Grant J. Birindelli
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School