Combined Computational and Experimental Assessment of a Small Scale Methane Oxygen RDRE

This work details the numerical and experimental analysis of a modular, small scale gaseous methane/oxygen RDE. It also describes the development of a facility for small-scale rotating detonation engine experiments. The RDRE was machined in-house with stainless steel and features a doublet injector. 3D URANS simulations with and without chemistry were performed to analyze injector performance, mixing behavior, and detonation wave characteristics. Experiments were conducted to gather thrust, time-averaged pressure readings and detonation wave speed for a variety of mass flow rates. High speed footage was also obtained to validate the wave speed calculated from the microphone data.