Experiment - 7

Performance Analysis of Ramjet Engine

Submitted by:

19AE300 Smarak Pradhan

Aim:
To study the thermodynamics of a simulation of the ramjet engine for a low
subsonic flow regime and obtain performance characteristic of the engine
as:
1. Thrust vs. Fuel Consumption
2. Drag vs. Mach Number

Apparatus:
1. Subsonic Ramjet Engine
2. Air Supply System
3. Fuel System
4. Spring Balance
5. Manometer
6. Pressure Probe
7. Rotameter (For fuel flow)
8. Thermometers

Theory:
The ramjet engine is an air-breathing engine with no moving parts. It is
devoid of both a compressor and a turbine. It uses a phenomenon known as
the RAM effect to compress the flow. The engine's inlet ramp compresses
the flow using a sequence of shockwaves that originate on the ramp and are
reflected off the inlet walls. The combustor has a subsonic flow. It can't start
an airplane from a standstill, therefore it normally requires a rocket-like
start-up. It can be started once it reaches its operating Mach number. From
Mach 3 to Mach 6, they are most effective.
 Figure 1: Simple Representation of a Ramjet

The "ram" effect increases the pressure during ram compression, which is
an isentropic compression. Isobaric combustion occurs. When a Ramjet
engine operates at supersonic speeds, the compressed air is obtained
through shockwaves. Finally, the nozzle is associated with an isentropic
expansion mechanism, which increases flow velocity while decreasing
pressure. The inlet of a ramjet is designed around it. A high-speed item
travelling through air creates a high-pressure zone upstream. The high
pressure in front of the engine is used by a ramjet to propel air through the
tube, where it is heated by combusting some of it with fuel. It is then
accelerated to supersonic speeds by passing through a nozzle. This
acceleration gives the ramjet forward thrust. A ramjet is sometimes referred
to as a "flying stovepipe", a very simple device comprising an air intake, a
combustor, and a nozzle. Normally, the only moving parts are those within
the turbopump, which pumps the fuel to the combustor in a liquid-fuel
ramjet. Solid-fuel ramjets are even simpler.
The experiment is designed only to study the combustion process similar to
that of the Ramjet Engine. The compressed air is passed through the
combustion chamber through a compressor,and the following performance
parameter are to be studied:
1. Thrust vs. Fuel Flow Rate
TSFC = ṁf/F
where, ṁf is the fuel flow rate and F is the thrust produced by the engine.
2. TSFC vs. M
We can express the combustion process in the combustion chamber
through the following equation of ideal heat transfer at constant pressure.
ṁfΔHf = ṁ(Tout - Tin)
where, we have
 Therefore we can obtain the relation between Mout andṁf as

Where we have ṁ as the airflow rate and ΔHf as the

calorific value of the fuel
The fuel used is domestic LPG gas for which ΔHf is taken to be 46/kJ. The
fluid is assumed to be air, and the value of R is taken corresponding to it.
The value γ of is taken to be 1.4 for the combustion process.

Procedure:
1. The compressed air was passed through a compressor to the ramjet
engine,and the drag was measured for different values of inlet.
2. The Total Pressure and the Static Pressure values were obtained at a
different location along the axis of the engine.
3. The engine was ignited for the hot run.
4. The supply pressure was fixed to 10 cm,and the variation of the thrust
with the fuel flow rate was observed by varying the fuel rate.
5. The above step was repeated for 15 cm and 5 cm of H2O supply
pressure.

Observations:
Table 1:
Cold Run Table – Air supply pressure at 10 cm H2O – Air supply velocity 120 ft/s or 36.576 m/s
(MIN = 0.104)
Hot Run Tables for various Supply pressures with average temperature = 34℃

Table 2:
Table 3:
Table 4:
Graphs:
Plot 1:

Plot 2:
 Plot 3:

Discussion:
1. In the cold run,we observed that the total pressure increased with the
probe position while there was a decrease in the static pressure.
Ideally,the Pressure should remain constant, but the Pressure change
showed the effects of boundary layer separation and viscous losses.
2. Mach number was very less so we can say that the engine is
experimented in a very low subsonic region. As the Mach number is
much less than the 0.3,we can assume the flow to be
incompressible,and hence the flow could be very well approximated
to ideal equations.
3. We observed that as the inlet Mach Number increases, we see the
maximum TSFC value is reduced, which can be explained easily as
when the Mach Number increases, we have increased the thrust and
thus reduced the value of TSFC.
4. One interesting observation is that the thrust value does not change
much with the fuel flow rate,and there was only a slight change when
we increased the fuel flow rate significantly. This shows that the fuel
flow rate might not be a dominating design parameter when we want
to increase the engine's thrust.
5. In the plot of Thrust vs. fuel flow rate, it was observed that we had
higher thrust for the higher value of supply total pressure (owing to a
higher value of Mach Number).
6. The sources of the error are primarily due to the instrument. Every
instrument comes with an error margin. The other sources may be
parallax error in taking the readings, least count error, and zero
errors.
7. The experiment was very useful in understanding the basic relation
between a few parameters of the engine and appreciating the
qualitative relation between them.
8. The experiment could be further extended to study the quantitative
properties in detail by designing the experiment by incorporating
efficiencies and viscous effects.