Combustion performance of hydrogen fueled parallel wall-jet used for drag reduction in a supersonic combustor

Abstract

Hydrogen fueled parallel wall-jet combustion is considered to be one of the most promising drag reduction technologies in supersonic combustors, researchers mainly focus on its drag reduction mechanism, while balancing its combustion efficiency and drag reduction performance is of great significance for engine performance and energy conservation. In this paper, combustion performance of hydrogen fueled parallel wall-jet is numerically investigated. Kinetic reaction rate and scalar dissipation rate are defined to decouple the chemical reaction and mixing processes. Results indicate that although hydrogen fueled parallel wall-jet combustion is a nonequilibrium chemical reaction process, the combustion process is dominated by mixing due to the much larger magnitude order of kinetic reaction rate. The investigation also reveals that, compared to the effects of mainstream total temperature, mainstream Mach number presents a more significant effect on combustion efficiency. Moreover, combustion efficiency increase first brings negative and then brings beneficial effects on drag reduction performance, which is due to the different sensibilities of the two skin friction determinants viscosity and velocity gradient to combustion efficiency. It is found that, viscosity is more sensitive to combustion efficiency, with combustion efficiency increases by 5.4 %, viscosity increases by 4.15 %, while velocity gradient only decreases by 2.19 %.

Keywords

• Hydrogen fuel
• Parallel wall-jet
• Combustion
• Drag reduction