In the lab we are studying the inlet flow for different types of Pulse Detonation Engine configurations as a part of an ONR program. During 2001-2002 I have been working on disk-excited axisymmetric inlets to find out which excitation frequencies and amplitudes may lead to an inlet unstart with subsequent drop in efficiency as a result. It was found that the studied M=2.15 inlet, which was common for six detonation tubes of which about 2 were open at any given instant, excitations in the 30-100 Hz range were strongly dampened and failed to unstart the inlet under any studied set of conditions. The research was a continuation of earlier studies by Sudarshan Mullagiri on 2D piston-excited inlets and aerlier versions of the disk-excited axisymmetric inlet. The research was continued together with Venkata Nori and Nelson Lerma carrying experiments for rotating valve and air injection-excited inlets at Mach 3.5 (see publication below).
A picture of the Mach 2.15 single-cone axisymmetric inlet mounted in the 6x6" test section of the MAE Mach 1.5-4 wind tunnel. On top of the tunnel downstream of the test section is the motor that drives the rotating disk exciting the model through a flexible shaft. The black box in the foreground is the motor controller showing the current rpm of the disk. The model is fitted with approximately 15 pressure taps that are hooked up to pressure transducers outside of the tunnel. To acquire higher-speed data, a miniature transducer was later mounted inside the model.
For more information about these experiments, see the below papers:
Nori, V., Lerma, N., Gustavsson, J., Segal, C., Fernandez, R., "Forced Oscillations in a Mixed-Compression Inlet at Mach 3.5 for Pulse Detonation Engine Systems", Journal of Fluids Engineering, 128 (3), pp. 494-506, 2006.
Gustavsson, J., Nori, V., Segal, C., "Modeling of Air Intake and Engine Interaction in Axisymmetric Pulse Detonation Engine Systems", AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power, Mar-Apr 2003.
Mullagiri, S., Gustavsson, J. P. R., Segal, C., "Modeling of Air Intake and Engine Interaction in Pulse Detonation Engine Systems", AIAA 2001-1211, Proceedings of the ISABE 2001 Conference, Bangalore, India, Sep 2001.
Mullagiri, S. Gustavsson, J., Segal, C., "Modeling of Air Intake and Engine Interaction in Pulse Detonation Engine Systems", Proceedings of the 13th ONR Propulsion Meeting 2001, Aug 2001.
NASA Glenn Pulse Detonation Engine Technology Project
Caltech's Explosion Dynamics Laboratory PDE Research
ARPI's PDE Program
Ronald K Hanson's (Stanford) PDE Research Facility
van Wingarden et al's paper Detonations in pipes and in the open
Back to my UF research page
Back to my homepage