The response of the solid fuel ramjet combustor to the inflow excitations

Abstract

The response of the solid fuel ramjet to the imposed excitations of the ambient pressure is investigated using full part computation of the system including the intake, combustion chamber, and exhaust nozzle. The finite volume solver of the turbulent reacting compressible flow is used to simulate the flow field, where two grid blocks are considered for discretizing the computational domain. Both impulsive and oscillatory excitations are imposed to predict the response of the solid fuel mass flow rate. The results demonstrate that strong fuel flow overshoot occurs in the case of sudden impulsive excitation which is omitted for gradual impulsive excitations. In addition, the oscillatory excitations eventually lead to regular oscillatory response with frequencies similar to the imposed excitations and decrease the average fuel mass flow rate independent of the excitation frequency. But the amplitude of the response depends on the excitation frequency and amplification occurs in some frequencies. This behavior is not related to the combustion instabilities and is similar to the L-star instability in the solid rocket motors. In the design and analysis of the solid fuel ramjets, the coupling of the flight dynamics and the engine performance must be considered, and this study is the first step of such complete methodology to have more accurate predictions.