Computational evaluation of strut based scramjet engine combustion with different conventional fuel/oxidizer

The high performance and instability in combustion chamber are the most challenging requirements for faster developments and technical advances in most of the engines. The design and development challenges of such engines are highly influenced by its combustion behavior taking place inside the combustion chamber. Studies on the injection, vaporization and combustion phenomena inside combustion chamber are a growing challenge and difficult entities in design and vigorously investigated by researchers. In this domain, the present research is formulated for analyzing the combustion performance of hydrogen/hydrocarbon and oxygen computationally in a strut based combustion chamber. This work leads way to identify the injection flow behavior and the hypersonic combustion nature of various fuels with comparison of different parameters. CFD simulations of the hydrogen/hydrocarbon fuelled strut based scramjet combustor are performed at Mach 2 airstream having typical Mach 10 flying conditions. The primary objective of this study is to numerically evaluate the combustor performance for varying fuels and its injection parameters .Mixing and reacting flow characteristics of the combustor are studied for the centrally located strut based scramjet combustor solving three dimensional RANS equations k-epsilon turbulence model using coupled implicit solver based on finite volume approach. Salient results of non-reacting and reacting flow simulations are presented. Performance parameter like mixing efficiency, total pressure recovery and hydrogen/hydrocarbon consumption are computed and compared for different cases. The computation is performed by using a CFD solver FLUENT and analyzed for LES model of four different fuels. Keywords— Hydrogen fuel, Hypersonic combustion, Combustion performance, Strut injector, Air breathing hypersonic vehicle