Effects of a straight guide vane on the operating characteristics of rotating detonation combustor

Rotating detonation engine is expected to develop as a power device for high-performance aircraft, but the uneven flow field at the combustor outlet restricts the improvement of engine performance. In this paper, a straight guide vane was experimentally investigated to verify its feasibility of performance improvement of rotating detonation combustor. The results show that the stable single-wave mode of detonation wave can be successfully initiated in rotating detonation combustor, and the detonation-wave propagation velocity increases first and then decreases with the increase of equivalence ratio. Rotating detonation combustor could obtain better experimental results in the adjacent range of stoichiometric ratio, and the intermittent detonation phenomenon could occur under both low and high equivalence ratio conditions. The thrust performance of the combustor could increase with the increase of guide vane length. The straight guide vane could make full use of the radial velocity in rotating detonation combustor to achieve performance improvement.