Experimental validation of rotating detonation for rocket propulsion.

Space travel requires high-powered, efficient rocket propulsion systems for controllable launch vehicles and safe planetary entry. Interplanetary travel will rely on energy-dense propellants to produce thrust via combustion as the heat generation process to convert chemical to thermal energy. In propulsion devices, combustion can occur through deflagration or detonation, each having vastly different characteristics.

Multiscale physics of rotating detonation waves: Autosolitons and modulational instabilities.

Proposed is a phenomenological modeling framework that is capable of reproducing the diverse experimental observations of the nonlinear, combustion wave propagation in a rotating detonation engine (RDE), specifically the nucleation and formation of combustion pulses, the soliton-like interactions between these combustion fronts, and the fundamental, underlying Hopf bifurcation to time-periodic modulation of the waves. In this framework, the mode-locked structures are classified as autosolitons or stably propagating nonlinear waves where the local physics of nonlinearity, gain, and dissipation exactly balance. We find that the global dominant balance physics in the RDE combustion chamber are dissipative and multiscale in nature: The fast combustion physics provide the energy input to form the fundamental mode-locked autosoliton state, while the slow physics of exhaust and propellant recovery shape the waveform and dictate the number of autosolitons.

Mode-locked rotating detonation waves: Experiments and a model equation.

Direct observation of a rotating detonation engine combustion chamber has enabled the extraction of the kinematics of its detonation waves. These records exhibit a rich set of instabilities and bifurcations arising from the interaction of coherent wave fronts and global gain dynamics. We develop a model of the observed dynamics by recasting the Majda detonation analog as an autowave process.