NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF COMBUSTION PERFORMANCE OF VARIOUS FUELS IN WEDGE-SHAPED STRUT-BASED SCRAMJET COMBUSTOR

In the aerospace propulsion industry, diverse characteristics of engines are utilized. The selection of any space vehicle is considered by analyzing the engine power generation. The power gained at the end of each operational cycle in all sorts of space engines is initially dependent on two key factors, i.e., operating condition of incoming air with working fuel and selection of working fuel. Other criteria may also affect the engine performance. Therefore, the present article is about the selection of working fuels for supersonic combustion in scramjet engine. Numerical investigation has been performed by using computational fluid dynamic simulation software (ANSYS 14.0 - FLUENT). The parallel fuel injection strategy has been used to uncover the combustion characteristics. The observation involves flame strength, ignition delay, and mixing length. The selected computational model was first observed by Waidmann et al. The experimentation was performed in the German Aerospace Laboratory also known as DLR. Extensive validation has been performed for both reacting and non-reacting flow-field case. The computational mesh generation details along with grid independence test have been explained. The present article involves three fuels (hydrogen, methane, and ethylene) for comparison. The outcome suggests that the lower ignition lag is identified in case of ethylene fuel. However, the maximum combustion efficiency is found by using hydrogen fuel. Moreover, stronger flames and pressure-field formation with wider wake region are visualized in case of hydrogen fuel compared with other fuels.