Experimental study on DDT characteristics in spiral configuration pulse detonation engines

This work investigated features of the deflagration to detonation transition in a curved tube. A number of experiments were performed to acquire the transition rule of DDT, which would provide the design data and theoretical basis for the curved detonation chamber. The content of research is as follows: (1) Flow resistance experiments of nine detonation chambers have been explored. The results show that the spiral configuration can reduce the axial length of DC, and the total pressure recovery coefficient increases with the spiral pitch. (2) Single-cycle detonation experiments have been conducted using the 9 tubes in the resistance experiments. Liquid-gasoline/air is used as the detonative mixture in all the experiments. The detonation experimental results indicate that there is no detonation wave formed in the straight tube, but in all the selected spiral tubes fully-developed detonation waves have been obtained; compared to the straight tube case, the DDT time decrease with the decreasing of the radius of curvature (RC) by 6.2%~19.8% in the spiral detonation tubes.