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.
A liquid propellant rocket engine is such a big 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 many times more 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: 2311Discussion: 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%).»
Pulsating detonation engine tested in Russia
The Lyulka Experimental Design Bureau developed, manufactured and tested a prototype of a pulsating resonator detonation engine with a two-stage combustion of a kerosene-air mixture. According to ITAR-TASS, the average measured thrust of the engine was about one hundred kilograms, and the duration continuous work─ more than ten minutes. By the end of this year, the Design Bureau intends to manufacture and test a full-size pulsating detonation engine.
According to Alexander Tarasov, chief designer of the Lyulka Design Bureau, during the tests, operating modes characteristic of turbojet and ramjet engines. Measured values of specific thrust and specific consumption fuel turned out to be 30-50 percent better than conventional air jet engines. During the experiments, the new engine was switched on and off repeatedly, as well as traction control.
On the basis of the studies carried out, the data obtained during testing, as well as the circuit design analysis, the Lyulka Design Bureau intends to propose the development of a whole family of pulsed detonation aircraft engines. In particular, engines with a short service life for unmanned vehicles can be created. aircraft and missiles and aircraft engines with cruising supersonic flight.
In the future, on the basis of new technologies, engines for rocket-space systems and combined propulsion systems of aircraft capable of flying in the atmosphere and beyond it can be created.
According to the design bureau, the new engines will increase the aircraft's thrust-to-weight ratio by 1.5-2 times. In addition, when using such power plants, the flight range or the mass of aircraft weapons can increase by 30-50 percent. At the same time, the specific weight of the new engines will be 1.5-2 times less than that of conventional jet power plants.
The fact that in Russia work is underway to create a pulsating detonation engine was reported in March 2011. This was stated then by Ilya Fedorov, managing director of the Saturn research and production association, which includes the Lyulka Design Bureau. What type of detonation engine was in question, Fedorov did not specify.
Currently, three types of pulsating engines are known - valved, valveless and detonation. The principle of operation of these power plants is to periodically supply fuel and oxidizer to the combustion chamber, where the fuel mixture is ignited and the combustion products flow out of the nozzle with the formation jet thrust. The difference from conventional jet engines lies in the detonation combustion of the fuel mixture, in which the combustion front propagates faster speed sound.
Throbbing jet engine was invented at the end of the 19th century by the Swedish engineer Martin Wiberg. A pulsating engine is considered simple and cheap to manufacture, but due to the characteristics of fuel combustion, it is unreliable. For the first time, a new type of engine was used in series during World War II on German V-1 cruise missiles. They were equipped with the Argus As-014 engine from Argus-Werken.
Currently, several major defense firms in the world are engaged in research in the field of high-efficiency pulsating jet engines. In particular, the work is being carried out by the French company SNECMA and American General Electric and Pratt & Whitney. In 2012, the US Naval Research Laboratory announced its intention to develop a spin detonation engine that would replace conventional gas turbine power plants on ships.
Spin detonation engines differ from pulsating ones in that the detonation combustion of the fuel mixture in them occurs continuously ─ the combustion front moves in an annular combustion chamber, in which fuel mixture constantly updated.
Space exploration is involuntarily associated with spacecraft. The heart of any launch vehicle is its engine. It must develop the first cosmic velocity - about 7.9 km / s in order to deliver the astronauts into orbit, and the second cosmic velocity in order to overcome the planet's gravitational field.
This is not easy to achieve, but scientists are constantly looking for new ways to solve this problem. Designers from Russia went even further and managed to develop a detonation rocket engine, the tests of which ended in success. This achievement can be called a real breakthrough in the field of space engineering.
New opportunities
Why are detonation engines assigned big hopes? According to scientists, their power will be 10 thousand times greater than the power of existing rocket engines. At the same time, they will consume much less fuel, and their production will be distinguished by low cost and profitability. What is it connected with?
It's all about the oxidation of fuel. If modern rockets use the deflagration process - slow (subsonic) combustion of fuel at constant pressure, then the detonation rocket engine functions due to an explosion, detonation combustible mixture. It burns at supersonic speed with the release of a huge amount of thermal energy simultaneously with the propagation of the shock wave.
Development and testing Russian version the detonation engine was engaged in a specialized laboratory "Detonation LRE" as part of the production complex "Energomash".
Superiority of new engines
Study and development detonation engines the world's leading scientists have been engaged in for 70 years. The main reason preventing the creation of this type of engine is the uncontrolled spontaneous combustion of fuel. In addition, the tasks of efficient mixing of fuel and oxidizer, as well as the integration of the nozzle and air intake, were on the agenda.
Having solved these problems, it will be possible to create a detonation rocket engine, which, in its own way, technical specifications overtakes time. At the same time, scientists call its following advantages:
- The ability to develop speeds in the subsonic and hypersonic ranges.
- Exception from the design of many moving parts.
- Lower weight and cost power plant.
- High thermodynamic efficiency.
Serially given type the engine was not produced. It was first tested on low-flying aircraft in 2008. The detonation engine for launch vehicles was tested for the first time by Russian scientists. That is why this event is of such great importance.
Working principle: pulse and continuous
Currently, scientists are developing installations with a pulsed and continuous workflow. The principle of operation of a detonation rocket engine with impulse circuit The work is based on the cyclic filling of the combustion chamber with a combustible mixture, its sequential ignition and the release of combustion products into the environment.
Accordingly, in a continuous operating process, fuel is continuously supplied to the combustion chamber, the fuel burns in one or more detonation waves that continuously circulate across the flow. The advantages of such engines are:
- Single ignition of fuel.
- Relatively simple design.
- Small dimensions and mass of installations.
- More efficient use of the combustible mixture.
- Low level of produced noise, vibration and harmful emissions.
In the future, using these advantages, a detonation liquid-propellant rocket engine of a continuous operation scheme will replace all existing installations due to its weight, size and cost characteristics.
Detonation engine tests
The first tests of the domestic detonation plant were carried out as part of a project established by the Ministry of Education and Science. presented as a prototype small engine with a combustion chamber with a diameter of 100 mm and an annular channel width of 5 mm. The tests were carried out on a special stand, indicators were recorded when working on various types combustible mixture - hydrogen-oxygen, natural gas-oxygen, propane-butane-oxygen.
Tests of an oxygen-hydrogen detonation rocket engine proved that the thermodynamic cycle of these units is 7% more efficient than that of other units. In addition, it was experimentally confirmed that with an increase in the amount of fuel supplied, the thrust increases, as well as the number of detonation waves and the rotational speed.
Analogues in other countries
The development of detonation engines is carried out by scientists from leading countries of the world. Designers from the USA have achieved the greatest success in this direction. In their models, they implemented a continuous mode of operation, or rotational. The US military plans to use these installations to equip surface ships. Due to their lighter weight and small size with high output power, they will help increase the effectiveness of combat boats.
A stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen is used for its work by an American detonation rocket engine. The advantages of such an energy source are primarily economic - oxygen burns exactly as much as is required to oxidize hydrogen. Now the US government is spending several billion dollars to provide warships with carbon fuel. Stoichiometric fuel will reduce costs by several times.
Further directions of development and prospects
New data obtained as a result of testing detonation engines determined the use of fundamentally new methods for constructing a scheme for operating on liquid fuel. But for operation, such engines must have high heat resistance due to a large number released thermal energy. At the moment, a special coating is being developed that will ensure the operability of the combustion chamber under high-temperature exposure.
Special place in further research is the creation of mixing heads, with the help of which it will be possible to obtain drops of combustible material of a given size, concentration and composition. To address these issues, a new detonation liquid-propellant rocket engine will be created, which will become the basis of a new class of launch vehicles.
Detonation engine is often considered as an alternative standard engine internal combustion or rocket. It is overgrown with many myths and legends. These legends are born and live only because the people who spread them have either forgotten school course physicists, or even skipped it completely!
Increase in specific power or thrust
The first misconception.
From an increase in the rate of fuel combustion up to 100 times, it will be possible to increase the specific (per unit of working volume) power of an internal combustion engine. For rocket engines operating in detonation modes, thrust per unit mass will increase by a factor of 100.
Note: As always, it is not clear what mass we are talking about - the mass of the working fluid or the entire rocket as a whole.
There is no connection at all between the speed at which fuel burns and specific power.
There is a relationship between compression ratio and power density. For gasoline engines internal combustion, the compression ratio is about 10. In engines using the detonation mode, it can be increased by about 2 times, which is just realized in diesel engines, which have a compression ratio of about 20. Actually they work in detonation mode. That is, of course, the compression ratio can be increased, but after detonation has occurred, no one needs it! About what 100 times there can be no question!! Moreover, the working volume of the internal combustion engine is, say, 2 liters, the volume of the entire engine is 100 or 200 liters. The savings in terms of volume will be 1% !!! But the additional “expenditure” (wall thickness, new materials, etc.) will be measured not in percentages, but in times or tens of times !!
For reference. The work done is proportional, roughly speaking, to V * P (the adiabatic process has coefficients, but it does not change the essence now). If the volume is reduced by 100 times, then the initial pressure must increase by the same 100 times! (to do the same job).
Liter power can be increased if compression is abandoned at all or left at the same level, but supply hydrocarbons (in more) and pure oxygen in a weight ratio of about 1:2.6-4, depending on the composition of hydrocarbons, or liquid oxygen in general (where it was already :-)). Then it is possible to increase both the liter capacity and the efficiency (due to the growth of the "degree of expansion" which can reach 6000!). But on the way stands both the ability of the combustion chamber to withstand such pressures and temperatures, and the need to "feed" not on atmospheric oxygen, but on stored pure or even liquid oxygen!
Actually, something similar to this is the use of nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is just a way to put an increased amount of oxygen into the combustion chamber.
But these methods have nothing to do with detonation !!
Can be offered further development such exotic ways to increase liter capacity is to use fluorine instead of oxygen. This is a stronger oxidizing agent, i.e. reactions with it go with a large release of energy.
Increasing jet blast velocity
The second lure.
In rocket engines using detonation modes of operation, as a result of the fact that the combustion mode occurs at speeds above the speed of sound in a given medium (which depends on temperature and pressure), the pressure and temperature parameters in the combustion chamber increase several times, the speed of the outgoing jet jets. This proportionally improves all parameters similar engine, including, reduces its mass and consumption, and hence the required fuel supply.
As noted above, it is impossible to increase the compression ratio by more than 2 times. But again, the rate of outflow of gases depends on the energy supplied and their temperature! (Law of energy conservation). With the same amount of energy (the same amount of fuel), you can increase the speed only by lowering their temperature. But this is already prevented by the laws of thermodynamics.
Detonation rocket engines are the future of interplanetary flight
Misunderstanding the third.
Only rocket engines based on detonation technologies make it possible to obtain speed parameters required for interplanetary travel based on a chemical oxidation reaction.
Well, this is at least a logical fallacy. It follows from the first two.
No technology can already squeeze anything out of the oxidation reaction! At least for known substances. The outflow rate is determined by the energy balance of the reaction. Part of this energy, according to the laws of thermodynamics, can be converted into work (kinetic energy). Those. even if all the energy goes into kinetic energy, then this is a limit based on the law of conservation of energy and it cannot be overcome by any detonations, compression ratios, etc.
Except energy balance Very important parameter- "energy per nucleon". If you make small calculations, you can get that the oxidation reaction of a carbon atom (C) gives 1.5 times more energy than the oxidation reaction of a hydrogen molecule (H2). But due to the fact that the carbon oxidation product (CO2) is 2.5 times heavier than the hydrogen oxidation product (H2O), the rate of outflow of gases from hydrogen engines by 13%. True, we must also take into account the heat capacity of the combustion products, but this gives a very small correction.
The Russian Federation was the first in the world to successfully test a detonation liquid-propellant rocket engine. A new power plant was created at NPO Energomash. This is a success for the Russian rocket and space industry, told the correspondent federal agency news scientific columnist Alexander Galkin.
As reported on the official website of the Foundation for Advanced Study, in the new engine, thrust is created by controlled explosions when the oxygen-kerosene fuel pair interacts.
“The significance of the success of these tests for the advanced development of domestic engine building can hardly be overestimated […] The future lies with rocket engines of this kind,” said the Deputy CEO And chief designer NPO Energomash Vladimir Chvanov.
It should be noted that the engineers of the enterprise have been going to the successful testing of a new power plant for the past two years. Research work conducted by scientists of the Novosibirsk Institute of Hydrodynamics. M.A. Lavrentiev of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Moscow Aviation Institute.
“I think that this is a new word in the rocket industry, and I hope that it will be useful for the Russian cosmonautics. Energomash is now the only structure that develops rocket engines and successfully sells them. They recently made the RD-181 engine for the Americans, which is weaker in terms of total power than the proven RD-180. But the fact is that there has been a new trend in engine building - reducing the weight of onboard equipment spaceships causes the engines to become less powerful. This is due to the reduction in output weight. So we must wish success to the scientists and engineers of Energomash, which is working and doing something. We still have creative heads,” Alexander Galkin is sure.
It should be noted that the very principle of creating a jet stream through controlled explosions may raise the question of the safety of future flights. However, you should not worry, as the shock wave twists in the combustion chamber of the engine.
“I’m sure they will come up with a vibration dampening system for new engines, because, in principle, traditional launch vehicles that were developed back in Sergei Pavlovich Korolev And Valentina Petrovich Glushko, also gave strong vibration on the hull of the ship. But somehow they won, they found a way to extinguish the colossal shaking. Everything will be the same here,” the expert concludes.
Currently, employees of NPO Energomash are conducting further research to work on traction stabilization and reducing loads on the supporting structure of the power plant. As noted at the enterprise, the operation of the oxygen-kerosene fuel pair and the very principle of creating lift provide lower fuel consumption when more power. In the future, tests of a full-size model will begin, and perhaps it will be used to launch payloads or even astronauts into orbit of the planet.
