Experimental investigation on the mixing chamber in pulse detonation chamber

Detonation has received much attention lately and been widely explored to its propulsion application. However, there are many unresolved issues related to the applications of detonation combustion, for example the mixing of fuel with air, especially the liquid fuel. This paper focused on the mixing chamber optimization based on pulse detonation chamber (PDC). The mixing characteristic inside a mixing chamber was obtained by three-dimensional simulation. The simulation results indicate that well mixing but uneven concentration distribution occurred when air was introduced through the tangential inlets, while bad mixing but well-proportioned distribution occurred when air was introduced through the axial inlets. The mixing degree and gasoline-air distribution performance when air was introduced through the radial inlets were between that of tangential air flow and axial air flow, and the system energy loss was the largest. According to the above results and the experimental experience, four mixing chambers were designed. In order to observe the effects of mixing chambers on ignition-detonation performance of PDC the proofof-principle experiments of PDC were carried out. The results indicate that the fourth mixing chamber with double orifice plate offered the best ignition-detonation performance.