Tau.Neutrino said:
Computer modeling brings simple, efficient rocket engine closer to reality
Engineers at the University of Washington are working on a new type of rocket engine that holds the promise of being lighter, more efficient, and simpler to make than conventional liquid-fuel rockets. Called a Rotational Detonation Engine (RDE), one of the biggest hurdles to making it practical is to develop mathematical models that can describe how the very unpredictable engine design works in order to make it more stable.
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A rotating pulse engine based on the V1 rocket engine, eh. The V1 engine was a ramjet. Is this also a ramjet? “it can act as both a jet and a rocket”. That’s not impossible, ramjets work most efficiently at supersonic speeds around Mach 3, easily fast enough for a conversion to rocket power.
A colleague of mine at CSIRO did a lot of work on pulsed combustion, David Proctor.
> instead of a combustion chamber, the fuel and air are injected into an open, circular channel and ignited. The combustion pulse flows around the channel and becomes self-sustaining as it generates waves that continually cycle as the hot gases are pushed out through the open end of the channel.
The combustion in a circular channel reminds me of an aerospike design, which has combustion in an annulus. The aerospike usually requires very narrow gaps, which precludes its use for small engines, but may be more efficient for large engines.
I’d like to see a picture of the internals of this. Here it is. Have to call this the KKKK paper. Can you make any sense of this? eg. is the centre of the engine rotating or stationary? Which are the injectors and which is the spark plug?
