Experimental study on RP3 aviation kerosene oblique detonation engine

The oblique detonation engine has great potential application in high flight Mach number airbreathing vehicles because of its higher thermodynamic efficiency and smaller size. The research about the oblique detonation engine is renewed all over the world in recent years. However, all of the oblique detonation experiments are conducted with hydrogen fuel or ethylene. There is no experimental result about the kerosene oblique detonation. In order to examine the application feasibility of kerosene oblique detonation engine, the experimental study on the liquid RP3 aviation kerosene oblique detonation engine is conducted in JF-12 shock tunnel and the test time is about 50ms. The difficult issue for the initiation of kerosene oblique detonation is that the ignition delay time of kerosene-air is too long and the autoignition cannot occur in the combustor. A new forced detonation initiation method is put forth to deal with this key issue. The total temperature of JF-12 shock tunnel is 3800 K and the global equivalence ratio is 0.9, which replicates Mach 9 flight-equivalent condition. The steady-state oblique detonation is obtained successfully during the experiments, which demonstrates the application feasibility of the kerosene oblique detonation engine.