Copyright© 1997, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.

AIAA-97-1914

On the Numerical Simulation of Supersonic Combustion

Fenggan Zhuang*
China Aerospace Corporation, P. O. Box 849, Beijing 100830, CHINA
Jianqiang Chen & Hanxin Zhang
China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center
P. O. Box 211, Mianyang, Sichuan 621000, CHINA

Abstract is impossible by now to simulate all the

A third order in space and second order in
time ENN implicit scheme with mixed flux
splitting was developed to study the numerical
simulation of supersonic combustion problems.
First we study supersonic reacting mixing layer
and the Kelvin- Helmholtz vortex structure
could not be found to persist in the flow. A
swirling mechanism is introduced to study the
enhancement of supersonic mixing and thus
leads to a higher combustion efficiency based on
our previous investigation on the different
character of bursting of supersonic and subsonic
vortex. The numerical scheme is also applied to
the study of flow in combustion chambers and
simplified ram jet engines. The effects of the
variations of their geometrical parameters on
combustion flows are clearly indicated.
1. Introduction
It is well known for high mach number
flying vehicles, a suitable propulsive device is
scramjet engine with hydrogen as the fuel. In
order to study the detail flow field inside the
engine under widely varying flight conditions,
ground tests alone are not sufficient and in fact it
important flight parameters for the ground
testing facilities. So before the flying test
numerical simulation of this kind of complex
fields provide a very useful artifice in the
development stage of scramjet engine.
There are also some fundamental problems
to be investigated related to the scramjet design.
First we have to study carefully the mixing of
supersonic streams, as many investigations
indicate the mixing of supersonic streams is not
as effective as the mixing of subsonic streams
and measures should be taken to increase the
mixing efficiency without other deteriorating
effects. Of course supersonic turbulence
modeling is another difficult subject and little
studied. In the present paper our numerical
simulation will be based on the Navier-Stokes
equations. We have discussed high order
accurate difference scheme in ref. 1 and in the
present study a third order in space and second
order in time implicit ENN scheme seems very
appropriate. The flow simulations inside
simplified combustion chambers and ramjet
engines are successful with this numerical
scheme.

*AIAA Associate Fellow

Copyright © 1997 by Fenggan Zhuang. Published by the American Institue of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. with permission