Investigation of an Innovative Injector for Rotating Detonation Rocket Engines

Abstract

A novel injector designed to improve mixing from discrete injector pairs has been investigated with transient, non-reactive, three-dimensional CFD simulations. Subsurface impingement was found to mix gaseous methane and oxygen quicker than above surface impingement. Adding a thin slot to the injector improved both the axial and azimuthal mixing of the gases prior to their injection into the annular combustor of a rotating detonation rocket engine. The slot sizes can be made small enough to prevent detonation waves from propagating upstream and inhibit other types of flashback. The configuration investigated is readily fabricated and easily incorporated into current RDRE rigs being tested at the University of Washington. The results of this CFD study indicate that this injector concept may enable significant improvements in combustion efficiency and pressure gain in RDRE combustors.