The US Navy plans to modernize its power gas turbine plants, which are currently installed on their aircraft and ships, by changing conventional Brayton cycle engines to detonation rotary engines. This is expected to save fuel in the amount of about 400 million dollars annually. However, the serial use of new technologies is possible, according to experts, not earlier than in a decade.
The development of rotary or spin rotary engines in America is carried out by the US Navy Research Laboratory. According to initial estimates, the new engines will have more power, and also about a quarter more economical conventional engines. At the same time, the basic principles of operation of the power plant will remain the same - the gases from the burnt fuel will flow into the gas turbine, rotating its blades. According to the US Navy Laboratory, even in the relatively distant future, when the entire US fleet will be powered by electricity, the responsibility for generating energy will still be gas turbines modified to some extent.
Recall that the invention of the pulsating air-jet engine falls on the end of the nineteenth century. The author of the invention was the Swedish engineer Martin Wiberg. New power plants became widespread during the Second World War, although they were significantly inferior in their technical specifications aircraft engines that existed at that time.
It should be noted that on this moment time, the American fleet has 129 ships, which use 430 gas turbine engines. Every year, the cost of providing them with fuel is about 2 billion dollars. In the future when modern engines will be replaced by new ones, and the volume of costs for the fuel component will also change.
Engines internal combustion currently in use operate on the Brayton cycle. If we define the essence of this concept in a few words, then it all comes down to the sequential mixing of the oxidizer and fuel, further compression of the resulting mixture, then arson and combustion with the expansion of combustion products. This expansion is precisely used to set in motion, move the pistons, rotate the turbine, that is, perform mechanical actions, providing a constant pressure. The process of combustion of the fuel mixture moves at subsonic speed - this process is called daflagration.
As for new engines, scientists intend to use explosive combustion in them, that is, detonation, in which combustion occurs at supersonic speeds. And although at present the phenomenon of detonation has not yet been fully studied, it is known that with this type of combustion, a shock wave arises, which, propagating through a mixture of fuel and air, causes a chemical reaction, which results in the release of quite a large number thermal energy. When the shock wave passes through the mixture, it heats up, which leads to detonation.
In the development of a new engine, it is planned to use certain developments that were obtained in the process of developing a detonation pulsating engine. Its working principle is that pre-compressed fuel mixture is fed into the combustion chamber, where it is ignited and detonated. The combustion products expand in the nozzle, performing mechanical actions. Then the whole cycle repeats from the beginning. But the disadvantage of pulsating motors is that the cycling frequency is too low. In addition, the design of these motors themselves becomes more complex as the number of pulsations increases. This is due to the need to synchronize the operation of the valves that are responsible for supplying the fuel mixture, as well as directly to the detonation cycles themselves. Pulsating engines are also very noisy, they require a large amount of fuel to operate, and work is possible only with constant metered fuel injection.
If we compare detonation rotary engines with pulsating ones, then the principle of their operation is slightly different. So, in particular, new engines provide for a constant undamped detonation of fuel in the combustion chamber. This phenomenon is called spin or rotating detonation. It was first described in 1956 by the Soviet scientist Bogdan Voitsekhovsky. And this phenomenon was discovered much earlier, back in 1926. The pioneers were the British, who noticed that in certain systems there was a bright luminous "head" that moved in a spiral, instead of a detonation wave that had a flat shape.
Voitsekhovsky, using a photo recorder, which he himself designed, photographed the front of the wave that moved in the annular combustion chamber in the fuel mixture. Spin detonation differs from plane detonation in that a single transverse shock wave arises in it, then a heated gas follows, which has not reacted, and already behind this layer there is a chemical reaction zone. And it is precisely such a wave that prevents the combustion of the chamber itself, which Marlen Topchyan called "a flattened donut."
It should be noted that in the past detonation engines have already been applied. In particular, we are talking about pulsating jet engine, which was used by the Germans at the end of World War II on V-1 cruise missiles. Its production was quite simple, the use is quite easy, but at the same time this engine was not very reliable for solving important tasks.
Further, in 2008, the Rutang Long-EZ, an experimental aircraft equipped with a pulse detonation engine, took off. The flight lasted only ten seconds at an altitude of thirty meters. During this time, the power plant has developed a thrust of about 890 newtons.
An experimental model of the engine, presented by the American laboratory of the US Navy, is an annular cone-shaped combustion chamber having a diameter of 14 centimeters on the fuel side and 16 centimeters on the side of the nozzle. The distance between the walls of the chamber is 1 centimeter, while the "tube" has a length of 17.7 centimeters.
A mixture of air and hydrogen is used as a fuel mixture, which is fed under a pressure of 10 atmospheres into the combustion chamber. The temperature of the mixture is 27.9 degrees. Note that this mixture is recognized as the most convenient for studying the phenomenon of spin detonation. But, according to scientists, it will be quite possible to use a fuel mixture in new engines, consisting not only of hydrogen, but also of other combustible components and air.
Experimental studies of a rotary engine have shown its greater efficiency and power compared to internal combustion engines. Another benefit is significant fuel savings. At the same time, during the experiment, it was found that the combustion of the fuel mixture in a rotary "trial" engine is non-uniform, so it is necessary to optimize the engine design.
The products of combustion, which expand in the nozzle, can be collected into one gas jet using a cone (this is the so-called Coanda effect), and then this jet is sent to the turbine. Under the influence of these gases, the turbine will rotate. Thus, part of the work of the turbine can be used to propel ships, and partly to generate energy, which is necessary for ship equipment and various systems.
The engines themselves can be produced without moving parts, which will greatly simplify their design, which, in turn, will reduce the cost of the power plant as a whole. But this is only in perspective. Before starting new engines in mass production, it is necessary to solve many difficult problems, one of which is the selection of durable heat-resistant materials.
Note that at the moment rotary detonation engines are considered one of the most promising engines. They are also being developed by scientists from the University of Texas at Arlington. Power point, which they created, was called the "engine of continuous detonation." At the same university, research is being conducted on the selection of various diameters of annular chambers and various fuel mixtures, which include hydrogen and air or oxygen in various proportions.
Russia is also developing in this direction. So, in 2011, according to the managing director of the Saturn research and production association I. Fedorov, scientists Scientific and technical center named after Lyulka, the development of a pulsating air jet engine is underway. Work is carried out in parallel with the development promising engine, dubbed "Product 129" for the T-50. In addition, Fedorov also said that the association is conducting research on the creation of advanced aircraft of the next stage, which are supposed to be unmanned.
At the same time, the head did not specify what kind of pulsating engine is coming speech. At the moment, three types of such engines are known - valveless, valve and detonation. Generally accepted, meanwhile, is the fact that pulsating engines are the simplest and cheapest to manufacture.
To date, several major defense firms are conducting research into the creation of pulsating high-performance jet engines. Among these firms are the American Pratt & Whitney and General Electric and French SNECMA.
Thus, we can draw certain conclusions: the creation of a new promising engine has certain difficulties. the main problem at the moment lies in the theory: what exactly happens when the shock detonation wave moves in a circle is known only in in general terms, and this greatly complicates the process of optimizing developments. That's why new technology, although it has a very great attractiveness, but on the scale of industrial production it is hardly realizable.
However, if researchers manage to deal with theoretical issues, it will be possible to talk about a real breakthrough. After all, turbines are used not only in transport, but also in the energy sector, in which an increase in efficiency can have an even stronger effect.
Materials used:
http://science.compulenta.ru/719064/
http://lenta.ru/articles/2012/11/08/detonation/
The detonation engine will increase the speed of the aircraft from Mach 5 to Mach 8.
Detonation is an explosion. Can it be made manageable? Is it possible to create hypersonic weapons on the basis of such engines? What rocket engines will take uninhabited and manned vehicles into near space? This was our conversation with the Deputy General Director - Chief Designer of "NPO Energomash named after Academician V.P. Glushko" Petr Levochkin.
Petr Sergeevich, what opportunities do new engines open up?
Petr Levochkin: If we talk about the short term, today we are working on engines for such rockets as the Angara A5V and Soyuz-5, as well as others that are at the pre-design stage and are unknown to the general public. In general, our engines are designed to lift a rocket from the surface of a celestial body. And it can be any - terrestrial, lunar, Martian. So, if the lunar or Martian programs are implemented, we will definitely take part in them.
What is the efficiency of modern rocket engines and are there ways to improve them?
Petr Levochkin: When it comes to energy and thermodynamic parameters engines, it can be said that ours, as well as the best foreign chemical rocket engines today, have reached a certain perfection. For example, the completeness of fuel combustion reaches 98.5 percent. That is, almost all the chemical energy of the fuel in the engine is converted into thermal energy of the outgoing gas jet from the nozzle.
Engines can be improved in many ways. This includes the use of more energy-intensive fuel components, the introduction of new circuit designs, and an increase in pressure in the combustion chamber. Another direction is the use of new, including additive, technologies in order to reduce labor intensity and, as a result, reduce the cost of a rocket engine. All this leads to a decrease in the cost of output payload.
However, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that increasing the energy characteristics of engines in the traditional way is ineffective.
Using a controlled propellant explosion could give a rocket a speed eight times the speed of sound
Why?
Petr Levochkin: Increasing the pressure and flow of fuel in the combustion chamber will naturally increase the thrust of the engine. But this will require an increase in the thickness of the walls of the chamber and pumps. As a result, the complexity of the structure and its mass increase, and the energy gain turns out to be not so great. The game will not cost the candle.
That is, rocket engines have exhausted the resource of their development?
Petr Levochkin: Not certainly in that way. Speaking technical language, they can be improved by increasing the efficiency of intra-motor processes. There are cycles of thermodynamic conversion of chemical energy into the energy of an outflowing jet, which are much more efficient than the classical combustion of rocket fuel. This is the detonation combustion cycle and the Humphrey cycle close to it.
The very effect of fuel detonation was discovered by our compatriot - later Academician Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich back in 1940. Realization of this effect in practice promised very great prospects in rocket science. It is not surprising that the Germans in those same years actively investigated the detonation process of combustion. But not quite further successful experiments they didn't make any progress.
Theoretical calculations have shown that detonation combustion is 25 percent more efficient than the isobaric cycle, which corresponds to fuel combustion at constant pressure, which is implemented in the chambers of modern liquid-propellant engines.
And what provides the advantages of detonation combustion in comparison with the classical one?
Petr Levochkin: The classic combustion process is subsonic. Detonation - supersonic. The speed of the reaction in a small volume leads to a huge heat release - it is several thousand times higher than in subsonic combustion, implemented in classical rocket engines with the same mass of burning fuel. And for us engine engineers, this means that with a much smaller detonation engine and with a small mass of fuel, you can get the same thrust as in modern huge liquid rocket engines.
It is no secret that engines with detonation combustion of fuel are also being developed abroad. What are our positions? We yield, we go at their level or we are in the lead?
Petr Levochkin: We don't give up, that's for sure. But I can’t say that we are in the lead either. The topic is fairly closed. One of the main technological secrets is how to ensure that the fuel and oxidizer of a rocket engine does not burn, but explodes, without destroying the combustion chamber. That is, in fact, to make a real explosion controllable and manageable. For reference: detonation is the combustion of fuel in the front of a supersonic shock wave. There are pulsed detonation, when the shock wave moves along the axis of the chamber and one replaces the other, as well as continuous (spin) detonation, when the shock waves in the chamber move in a circle.
As far as we know, experimental studies of detonation combustion have been carried out with the participation of your specialists. What results have been obtained?
Petr Levochkin: Work was carried out to create a model chamber for a liquid detonation rocket engine. Under the patronage of the Foundation for Advanced Study, a large cooperation of leading scientific centers Russia. Among them, the Institute of Hydrodynamics. M.A. Lavrentiev, MAI, "Keldysh Center", Central Institute of Aviation Motors. P.I. Baranov, Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Moscow State University. We proposed to use kerosene as a fuel, and gaseous oxygen as an oxidizing agent. In the process of theoretical and experimental studies, the possibility of creating a detonation rocket engine based on such components was confirmed. Based on the data obtained, we have developed, manufactured and successfully tested a model detonation chamber with a thrust of 2 tons and a pressure in the combustion chamber of about 40 atm.
This task was solved for the first time not only in Russia, but also in the world. So, of course, there were problems. Firstly, they are connected with the provision of stable detonation of oxygen with kerosene, and secondly, with the provision of reliable cooling of the fire wall of the chamber without curtain cooling and a host of other problems, the essence of which is clear only to specialists.
Can a detonation engine be used in hypersonic missiles?
Petr Levochkin: It is possible and necessary. If only because the combustion of fuel in it is supersonic. And in those engines on which they are now trying to create controlled hypersonic aircraft, the combustion is subsonic. And this creates a lot of problems. After all, if the combustion in the engine is subsonic, and the engine flies, say, at a speed of Mach 5 (one Mach equal to speed sound), it is necessary to slow down the oncoming air flow to sound mode. Accordingly, all the energy of this deceleration is converted into heat, which leads to additional overheating of the structure.
And in a detonation engine, the combustion process occurs at a speed of at least two and a half times higher than the sound speed. And, accordingly, we can increase the speed of the aircraft by this amount. That is, we are already talking not about five, but about eight swings. This is the actual speed that is currently achievable. aircraft with hypersonic engines, which will use the principle of detonation combustion.
Petr Levochkin: This complex issue. We have just opened the door to the area of detonation combustion. There is still a lot of unexplored left outside the brackets of our study. Today, together with RSC Energia, we are trying to determine how the engine as a whole with a detonation chamber may look in the future in relation to upper stages.
On what engines will a person fly to distant planets?
Petr Levochkin: In my opinion, for a long time we will fly on traditional rocket engines, improving them. Although, of course, other types of rocket engines are also developing, for example, electric rocket engines (they are much more efficient than rocket engines - their specific impulse is 10 times higher). Alas, today's engines and launch vehicles do not allow us to talk about the reality of massive interplanetary, and even more so intergalactic flights. So far, everything is at the level of fantasy: photon engines, teleportation, levitation, gravitational waves. Although, on the other hand, just a little over a hundred years ago, the writings of Jules Verne were perceived as pure fantasy. Perhaps a revolutionary breakthrough in the area where we work is not far away. Including in the field of practical creation of rockets using the energy of an explosion.
Dossier "RG"
"Scientific and Production Association Energomash" was founded by Valentin Petrovich Glushko in 1929. It now bears his name. Here they develop and produce liquid rocket engines for the I, in some cases II stages of launch vehicles. The NPO has developed more than 60 different liquid-propellant jet engines. The first satellite was launched on Energomash engines, the first man flew into space, the first self-propelled vehicle Lunokhod-1 was launched. Today, more than ninety percent of launch vehicles in Russia take off on engines designed and manufactured by NPO Energomash.
While all progressive humanity from the NATO countries is preparing to start testing a detonation engine (tests can happen in 2019 (but rather much later)), backward Russia announced the completion of testing such an engine.
They announced it quite calmly and without frightening anyone. But in the West, as expected, they got scared and a hysterical howl began - we will be left behind for the rest of our lives. Work on a detonation engine (DD) is being carried out in the USA, Germany, France and China. In general, there are reasons to believe that Iraq is interested in solving the problem and North Korea- a very promising development, which actually means new stage in rocket science. And in general in engine building.
The idea of a detonation engine was first voiced in 1940 by the Soviet physicist Ya.B. Zel'dovich. And the creation of such an engine promised huge benefits. For a rocket engine, for example:
- The power is increased by 10,000 times compared to a conventional rocket engine. IN this case we are talking about the power received per unit of engine volume;
- 10 times less fuel per unit of power;
- DD is simply significantly (many times) cheaper than a standard rocket engine.
Liquid rocket engine- this is such a large and very expensive burner. And expensive because a large number of mechanical, hydraulic, electronic and other mechanisms are required to maintain stable combustion. A very complex production. So complicated that the United States has been unable to create its own liquid-propellant rocket engine for many years and are forced to purchase RD-180 in Russia.
Russia will very soon receive a serial reliable inexpensive light rocket engine. With all the ensuing consequences:
a rocket can carry at times large quantity payload - the engine itself weighs significantly less, fuel is needed 10 times less for the declared flight range. And you can simply increase this range by 10 times;
the cost of the rocket is reduced by a multiple. This is a good answer for those who like to organize an arms race with Russia.
And there is also deep space… Simply fantastic prospects for its development are opening up.
However, the Americans are right and now there is no time for space - packages of sanctions are already being prepared so that a detonation engine does not happen in Russia. They will interfere with all their might - our scientists have made a painfully serious claim for leadership.
07 Feb 2018 Tags: 1934Discussion: 3 comments
* 10,000 times more power compared to a conventional rocket engine. In this case, we are talking about the power received per unit volume of the engine;
10 times less fuel per unit of power;
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somehow does not fit with other posts:
“Depending on the design, it can exceed the original LRE in terms of efficiency from 23-27% for a typical design with an expanding nozzle, up to 36-37% increase in KVRD (wedge-air rocket engines)
They are able to change the pressure of the outflowing gas jet depending on atmospheric pressure, and save up to 8-12% of fuel throughout the entire structure launch site (The main savings occur at low altitudes, where it reaches 25-30%).»Answer
Detonation engines are called engines in the normal mode of which detonation combustion of fuel is used. The engine itself can be (theoretically) anything - internal combustion engine, jet, or even steam. In theory. However, until now, all known commercially acceptable engines of such fuel combustion modes, commonly referred to as "explosion", have not been used due to their ... mmm .... commercial unacceptability ..
Source:
What gives application detonation combustion in engines? Grossly simplifying and generalizing, something like this:
Advantages
1. Replacing conventional combustion with detonation due to the peculiarities of the gas dynamics of the shock wave front increases the theoretical maximum achievable completeness of combustion of the mixture, which makes it possible to increase Engine efficiency, and reduce consumption by about 5-20%. This is true for all types of engines, both internal combustion engines and jet engines.
2. The combustion rate of a portion of the fuel mixture increases by about 10-100 times, which means that it is theoretically possible to increase the liter power for an internal combustion engine (or specific thrust per kilogram of mass for jet engines) by about the same number of times. This factor is also relevant for all types of engines.
3. The factor is relevant only for jet engines of all types: since the combustion processes take place in the combustion chamber at supersonic speeds, and the temperatures and pressures in the combustion chamber increase many times, there is an excellent theoretical opportunity to multiply the jet flow rate from the nozzle. Which in turn leads to a proportional increase in thrust, specific impulse, efficiency, and / or a decrease in engine mass and required fuel.
All these three factors are very important, but they are not revolutionary, but, so to speak, evolutionary in nature. Revolutionary is the fourth and fifth factor, and it applies only to jet engines:
4. Only the use of detonation technologies makes it possible to create a direct-flow (and, therefore, on an atmospheric oxidizer!) universal jet engine of acceptable weight, size and thrust, for the practical and large-scale development of the range of up to, super-, and hypersonic speeds of 0-20 Mach.
5. Only detonation technologies make it possible to squeeze out of chemical rocket engines (fuel-oxidizer steam) speed parameters required for their wide application in interplanetary flights.
Items 4 and 5. theoretically reveal to us a) cheap road into near space, and b) the road to manned launches to the nearest planets, without the need to make monstrous super-heavy launch vehicles weighing over 3500 tons.
The disadvantages of detonation engines stem from their advantages:
Source:
1. The burning rate is so high that most often these engines can be made to work only cyclically: inlet-burn-out. Which at least three times reduces the maximum achievable liter power and / or thrust, sometimes depriving the idea itself of meaning.
2. Temperatures, pressures, and rates of their rise in the combustion chamber of detonation engines are such that they exclude the direct use of most of the materials known to us. All of them are too weak to build a simple, cheap and efficient engine. Either a whole family of fundamentally new materials is required, or the use of design tricks that have not yet been worked out. We do not have materials, and the complication of the design, again, often makes the whole idea meaningless.
However, there is an area in which detonation engines are indispensable. This is an economically viable atmospheric hypersound with a speed range of 2-20 Max. Therefore, the battle is on three fronts:
1. Create an engine diagram with continuous detonation in the combustion chamber. Which requires supercomputers and non-trivial theoretical approaches to calculate their hemodynamics. In this area, the damned quilted jackets, as always, took the lead, and for the first time in the world they theoretically showed that a continuous delegation is generally possible. Invention, discovery, patent - all things. And they began to make a practical structure from rusty pipes and kerosene.
2. Creation constructive solutions making possible applications classic materials. Curse the quilted jackets with drunken bears, and here they were the first to come up with and make a laboratory multi-chamber engine that has already been working for an arbitrarily long time. The thrust is like that of the Su27 engine, and the weight is such that 1 (one!) grandfather holds it in his hands. But since the vodka was scorched, the engine turned out to be pulsating for the time being. On the other hand, the bastard works so cleanly that it can even be turned on in the kitchen (where the quilted jackets actually washed it down between vodka and balalaika)
3. Creation of supermaterials for future engines. This area is the tightest and most secret. I have no information about breakthroughs in it.
Based on the above, consider the prospects for detonation, piston internal combustion engine. As you know, the increase in pressure in the combustion chamber of classical dimensions, during detonation in the internal combustion engine, faster speed sound. Remaining in the same design, there is no way to make a mechanical piston, and even with significant bound masses, move in a cylinder with approximately the same speeds. The timing of the classic layout also cannot operate at such speeds. Therefore, a direct conversion of a classic ICE to a detonation one is meaningless from a practical point of view. The engine needs to be redesigned. But as soon as we start doing this, it turns out that the piston in this design is simply extra detail. Therefore, IMHO, a piston detonation ICE is an anachronism.
In reality, instead of a constant frontal flame in the combustion zone, a detonation wave is formed, rushing at supersonic speed. In such a compression wave, fuel and oxidizer are detonated, this process, from the point of view of thermodynamics, increases the efficiency of the engine by an order of magnitude, due to the compactness of the combustion zone.
Interestingly, back in 1940, the Soviet physicist Ya.B. Zel'dovich proposed the idea of a detonation engine in the article "On the Energy Use of Detonation Combustion". Since then, many scientists from different countries, then the United States, then Germany, then our compatriots came forward.
In the summer, in August 2016, Russian scientists managed to create the world's first full-size liquid-propellant jet engine operating on the principle of detonation combustion of fuel. Our country has finally established a world priority in the development of the latest technology for many post-perestroika years.
Why is it so good new engine? A jet engine uses the energy released by burning a mixture at constant pressure and a constant flame front. During combustion, the gas mixture of fuel and oxidizer sharply increases the temperature and the flame column escaping from the nozzle creates jet thrust.
During detonation combustion, the reaction products do not have time to collapse, because this process is 100 times faster than deflagration and the pressure increases rapidly, while the volume remains unchanged. The release of such a large amount of energy can actually destroy a car engine, which is why such a process is often associated with an explosion.
In reality, instead of a constant frontal flame in the combustion zone, a detonation wave is formed, rushing at supersonic speed. In such a compression wave, fuel and oxidizer are detonated, this process, from the point of view of thermodynamics increases engine efficiency by an order of magnitude, due to the compactness of the combustion zone. Therefore, experts so zealously set about developing this idea. In a conventional rocket engine, which is essentially a large burner, the main thing is not the combustion chamber and nozzle, but the fuel turbopump unit (TNA), which creates such pressure that fuel penetrates into the chamber. For example, in the Russian RD-170 rocket engine for Energia launch vehicles, the pressure in the combustion chamber is 250 atm and the pump that supplies the oxidizer to the combustion zone has to create a pressure of 600 atm.
In a detonation engine, pressure is created by detonation itself, which represents a traveling compression wave in the fuel mixture, in which the pressure without any TNA is already 20 times greater and turbopump units are superfluous. To make it clear, the American Shuttle has a pressure in the combustion chamber of 200 atm, and the detonation engine in such conditions needs only 10 atm to supply the mixture - this is like a bicycle pump and the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station.
In this case, a detonation-based engine is not only simpler and cheaper by an order of magnitude, but much more powerful and economical than a conventional rocket engine. The problem of co-control with a detonation wave arose on the way to implementing the detonation engine project. This phenomenon is not just a blast wave, which has the speed of sound, but a detonation wave propagating at a speed of 2500 m / s, there is no stabilization of the flame front in it, for each pulsation the mixture is updated and the wave starts again.
Previously, Russian and French engineers developed and built pulsating jet engines, but not on the principle of detonation, but on the basis of ordinary combustion pulsation. The characteristics of such PUVRDs were low, and when engine builders developed pumps, turbines and compressors, the age of jet engines and LREs came, and pulsating ones remained on the sidelines of progress. The bright heads of science tried to combine detonation combustion with a PUVRD, but the frequency of pulsations of a conventional combustion front is no more than 250 per second, and the detonation front has a speed of up to 2500 m/s and its pulsation frequency reaches several thousand per second. It seemed impossible to put into practice such a rate of mixture renewal and at the same time initiate detonation.
In the USA, it was possible to build such a detonation pulsating engine and test it in the air, however, it worked for only 10 seconds, but the priority remained with the American designers. But already in the 60s of the last century, the Soviet scientist B.V. Voitsekhovsky and, almost at the same time, an American from the University of Michigan, J. Nichols, came up with the idea to loop a detonation wave in the combustion chamber.
How a detonation rocket engine works
Such rotary engine consisted of an annular combustion chamber with nozzles placed along its radius to supply fuel. The detonation wave runs like a squirrel in a wheel around the circumference, the fuel mixture is compressed and burned out, pushing the combustion products through the nozzle. In a spin engine, we obtain a wave rotation frequency of several thousand per second, its operation is similar to the working process in a rocket engine, only more efficiently, due to the detonation of the fuel mixture.
In the USSR and the USA, and later in Russia, work is underway to create a rotary detonation engine with a continuous wave, to understand the processes occurring inside, for which a whole science of physical and chemical kinetics was created. To calculate the conditions of an undamped wave, powerful computers were needed, which were created only recently.
In Russia, many research institutes and design bureaus are working on the project of such a spin engine, including the engine-building company of the space industry NPO Energomash. The Advanced Research Foundation came to help in the development of such an engine, because it is impossible to obtain funding from the Ministry of Defense - they only need a guaranteed result.
Nevertheless, during tests in Khimki at Energomash, a steady state of continuous spin detonation was recorded - 8 thousand revolutions per second on an oxygen-kerosene mixture. At the same time, detonation waves balanced vibration waves, and heat-shielding coatings withstood high temperatures.
But do not flatter yourself, because this is only a demonstrator engine that has worked for a very short time and nothing has yet been said about its characteristics. But the main thing is that the possibility of creating detonation combustion has been proven and a full-size spin engine it is in Russia that will remain in the history of science forever.
