Investigation of Pulse Detonation Engines: the Effect of Variable Blockage Ratio on the Deflagration to Detonation Transition

<p>Detonation and constant volume combustion is well known to be thermodynamically more efficient than the typically utilized constant pressure. There have been numerous approaches of achieving detonation through deflagration-to-detonation transition most of which use evenly spaced obstacles with a specified constant blockage ratio to generate turbulence and pressure fluctuations. There have been few efforts to study effects of varying blockage ratio as a function of axial distance. This research analyzes the effect of variable blockage ratio on deflagration-to-detonation transition in ethylene-air mixtures. The experiments show that with certain blockage ratio functions detonation is more repeatable and produces a smaller variation in both peak pressure and wave velocity representative of consistently stable detonations.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis - Open Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Aerospace Engineering

Year

2015

Author dc:creator

• Tate, Christopher

• pulse detonation engines
• variable blockage
• deflagration
• detonation
• Aerospace Engineering

Repository record dc:identifier

https://commons.erau.edu/edt/252

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:commons.erau.edu:edt-1251