Ramjets and Scramjets:

An Introduction and Summary.

An Introduction:

A ramjet consists, essentially, of a diffuser, combustion chamber and nozzle to accelerate the
exhaust gases. Compression for combustion comes from the diffusion of the air stream and
shock waves from the nose cone. A scramjet, or supersonic combustion ramjet, operates under
essentially the same circumstances, but does not restrict the airflow as a typical ramjet does.
This allows thrust at hypersonic flight speeds, but several problems are presented in the high-
speed ignition of the fuels, and this field of propulsion is still highly experimental. In this
summary we will only peruse the current NASA Hyper-X project.

Ramjet Advantages:

-Low Weight

-High Thrust to Weight Ratio.

-No moving parts keep initial and maintenance costs down.

-Large Thrust to Unit Frontal Area.

-Provides best specific fuel consumption of all air breathing engines at supersonic speeds.

Ramjet Disadvantages:

-Does not work well at off design Mach numbers without a variable geometry diffuser and
supersonic spike.

-By the nature of air compression, does not provide static thrust.

-Fuel consumption at subsonic speeds is very high compared to other air breathing engines.
Figure 1: Cutaway View of a Ramjet. (Hill, Peterson; 158.)

Thermodynamic Analysis:

The Ideal Ramjet Engine:

Figure 2: Schematic Diagram of a Typical Ramjet. (Hill, Peterson; 156.)

To begin, we assume that the compression and expansion phases are isentropic and combustion
is at constant pressure. The ideal engine thrust is given by:
 (Eq.1)

where f is the fuel-air ratio, ue is the exhaust velocity and u is the flight velocity.

Since the compression and expansion phases are isentropic and combustion occurs at constant
pressure, the stagnation pressure does not change across the entire engine. Therefore:

(Eq. 2)

Assuming that the fluid properties R and gamma do not change in any of the processes, we can
relate the pressure at the inlet and exit to the Mach numbers representative at that point. This
is shown in equations 3 and 4.

(Eq. 3) (Eq. 4)

M is the flight speed Mach number and Me is the exhaust velocity Mach number. Adding the
condition that the exit pressure is equal to the entrance pressure we see that:

(Eq. 5)

We can determine the exhaust velocity to be:

(Eq.6)

where a is the speed of sound. Knowing the relation of the speed of sound to gamma, R, and T,
using the case in which the exit Mach number equals the entrance Mach number, and the ratio
of the entrance and exit temperatures equal to the ratio of the stagnation temperatures at
those points, we can state that the exit velocity becomes:
 (Eq. 7)

In our ideal engine we can neglect the enthalpy of the incoming fuel and say that the energy
equation becomes:

(Eq. 8)

where QR is the heating value of the fuel. Assuming a constant specific heat, we can state that
the fuel-air ratio now becomes:

(Eq. 9)

Combining several of these equations we can get the thrust per unit mass flow to be:

(Eq. 10)

The thrust specific fuel consumption, an important quantity, is given by:

(Eq. 11)

In this ideal analysis several important things have been neglected. A constant specific heat has
been used, whereas real flows vary with the temperature. We haven’t allowed for any frictional
or shock losses across the engine, and we’ve assumed that the fuel undergoes no disassociation.

The Real Ramjet Engine:

One of the prime losses associated with the real ramjet engine are changes in the stagnation
pressure across the engine. Below, in the T-s Diagram we can see that with the departure of
isentropic processes significant changes occur in the compression, combustion and expansion
segments. Stagnation pressure ratios can be formulated for each of these and are as follows:
 (Eq. 12)

From these, the overall stagnation pressure ratio can be found as:

(Eq.13)

Since it is possible that the exhaust pressure may not be the same as ambient, we can modify
our exhaust Mach number in terms of pressure ratios to be:

(Eq. 14)

Assuming that the heat loss through the engine is very small, the exhaust velocity can be stated
as:

(Eq. 15)

Although we have lost our isentropic assumption by taking into account the losses in stagnation
pressure, the stagnation temperatures do not change. We can now state the fuel-air ratio in
terms of the desired combustion outlet temperature, T04.

(Eq. 16)
The Thrust per unit airflow is now changed to become:

(Eq. 17)

Now the thrust specific fuel consumption is given by:

. (Eq. 18)

Example:

An ideal ramjet is flying at Mach 2 where the ambient temperature is 293 K. The fuel has a
heating value of 45,000 KJ/Kg and the temperature inside the combustion chamber is 2500 K.
Find the jet exit velocity and fuel ratio. If the air mass flow through the engine is 200 Kg/s, what
is the thrust produced and the thrust specific fuel consumption? For air, g = 1.4 and Cp= 1.0035
KJ/Kg K, which are assumed to remain constant.

Solution:

First we must find the velocity of the ramjet.

= 686 m/s

From the isentropic tables T0a/T0 = .556 for M=2.

T0a= 293/0.556 = 527 K.

*u

*686

= 1494 m/s

The fuel ratio is found by

= 0.0466

The thrust is found from

= 175.5 KN

The thrust specific fuel consumption is given by

= 0.0466/(175.5/200) =0.053 Kg/KN× s

Comments:

In this example we used theory which is valid for an ideal ramjet and made many assumptions to
simplify the problem.

1. We assumed the inlet to be isentropic. In reality there are pressure losses due to mostly
to shock waves and minor losses due to friction. We also assumed that there was no
heat transfer in the nozzle. This assumption is generally valid. It should be noted that
although there are pressure losses, if no heat is added or removed then the stagnation
temperature would remain constant. This is always the case with or without friction and
shocks. The static temperature, however, can change at the expense of pressure losses.
2. In the combustion chamber we assumed a constant pressure and no heat transfer
through the walls. In real life, there are pressure losses in the chamber along with heat
transfer. The pressure losses can be accounted for by introducing efficiency factors.
3. In the exit nozzle we made the same assumptions as the inlet. In addition we assumed
that the exit pressure was equal to the ambient pressure i.e. the flow was perfectly
expanded. When the ramjet is operating at off design conditions the flow may not
expand to ambient pressure. When this happens, there will either be expansion waves
for over expanded flow or shock waves for under expanded flow. Both cases reduce the
performance of the engine.

We assumed the specific heat to be constant throughout the engine. In reality, the specific heat
changes drastically with temperature. One way of resolving this is to use an average specific
heat.