Description:
Various Rotating Detonation Engines (RDEs) are being studied alongside commercial and government partners to progress the technology towards a fieldable TRL. Combustion by detonation produces greater efficiencies (Isp) and work than modern isobaric engines. When sustained, RDEs enable a performance leap unrealized in decades of R&D. By entraining a detonation to propagate azimuthally, continuous pressure gain is made available at lower fuel costs than nominal. The transient nature of the detonation phenomenon presents challenges which the UCF RDE group have, and continue to, overcome by characterizing RDEs through ultra-high-speed optical diagnostics, fluidic sensors, computational fluid dynamics, & iterative design.
Current Research Projects:
1. Carbon Rotating Detonation Combustor (CRDC)
2. Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine
3. Liquid Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine
4. Genesis
Current Research Projects:
1. Oblique Detonation Wave Engine
2. HYPER-MAN
3. Solid-Fuel Scramjet
4. Scramjet Ignitor
Description:
The turbulent shock tube (TST) is a 1.5 meter long steel channel with a 45mm square cross section. It is a modular facility designed to investigate turbulent flame acceleration, deflagration to detonation transition, and detonation physics with gaseous and liquid fuels at ambient conditions. The facility houses a turbulence generator comprised of perforated plates to produce optimal conditions in the test section. The test section, containing up to three 45 x 100 mm quartz windows, and 12 pressure transducers, is optimized for a plethora of optical diagnostics, including Schlieren, PIV, and PLIF.
Current Research Projects:
1. Deflagration to Detonation Transition (DDT)
2. National Automated Detonation Facility
Current Research Projects:
1. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection for Global Temperature Control
2. Improving Gas Turbine NOx Emissions with Combustor Axial Staging
3. Investigating Hydrogen Enrichment of Methane-Air Mixtures of Jet-in-Crossflow Flames
Current Research Projects:
1. Turbulent Flame Vortex Dynamics
2. Lean Blowout Dynamics of Bluff-Body Flames
3. Flow Independent Liquid Fuel Injection/Combustion