Date of Award

Spring 2005

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Master of Science in Aeronautical Engineering

Department

Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Eric Perrell

Committee Member

Vladimir V. Golubev

Committee Member

L.L. Narayanaswami

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to use a transient Computational Fluid Dynamics computer code written in FORTRAN 90 for full reaction kinetics, to perform an analysis of the physical processes and chemical phenomena occurring on a single cycle of an ideal Pulse Detonation Engine (PDE) using a stoichiometric mixture of H2 and O2. A small zone of high pressure and temperature is used to initiate the detonation wave in the PDE. A simple case with no chemical reactions and the same PDE geometry and “computational spark” is also tested. The speed of the wave relative to the reactants and a comparison with the simple case with no chemical reactions are used to verify the existence of a detonation wave being driven by the combustion of the reactants. The results and behavior of the detonation wave as it propagates through and out of the PDE are compared to those of similar numerical and experimental PDE cases in the literature, to verify the accuracy of the results. The results show that the basic physics and chemical phenomena occurring in the PDE can be modeled using a first order accurate computational code with non-equilibrium kinetics.

In future works the accuracy of the code will be increased to six-order in the spatial dimension to be able to model highly structured phenomena such as Deflagration to Detonation Transition (DDT) and fuel injection in supersonic flow for PDE applications.

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