Numerical Modeling of Combustion Dynamics in Full-Scale Rotating Detonation Engines

Presented by:

Pinaki Pal, Senior Research Scientist
Argonne National Laboratory

Rotating detonation engines (RDEs) have gained widespread attention for stationary power generation and high-speed propulsion applications. They offer significant advantages over deflagrative combustion in terms of pressure gain from reactants to products, faster heat release, higher thermal efficiency, and higher thrust. In realistic RDE configurations, fuel and oxidizer are separately injected at one end of an annular combustion chamber. One or more detonation waves continuously propagate in the azimuthal direction within the chamber near the injection plane as long as the reactants flow into the device after the initial ignition. RDEs involve highly unsteady and multi-scale physics, with significant complexity from fuel-oxidizer mixing, associated combustion modes, and coupled interactions with upstream/downstream components. This webinar will discuss numerical approaches developed at Argonne National Laboratory for predictive and computationally efficient CFD modeling of combustion dynamics in full-scale RDEs leveraging CONVERGE CFD software. Demonstration cases will be presented for both air-breathing and rocket RDEs operating on a variety of fuels, including hydrogen, ethylene, and methane.