Numerical simulation of cantilevered ramp injector flow fields for hypervelocity fuel/air mixing enhancement

Increasing demand for affordable access to space and high speed terrestrial transport has spawned research interest into various air-breathing hypersonic propulsion systems. Propulsion concepts such as the supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) and the shock-induced combustion ramjet (shcramjet) utilize oxygen freely available in the atmosphere and thereby substantially reduce the weight penalty of on-board oxidizer tankage used in rocket based systems. Of key importance to the ultimate success of an air-breathing concept is the ability to efficiently mix the fuel with atmospheric air. In the case of a hypersonic air-breather the challenge is accentuated due to the requirement of supersonic combustion. Flow velocities through the combustor on the order of thousands of meters per second provide the fuel and air with only a brief time to adequately combine. Contemporary mixing augmentation methods to address this issue have focused on fuel injection devices which promote axial vortices to enhance the mixing process. Much research effort has been expended on investigation of ramp injectors for this purpose. The present study introduces a new ramp injector design, based on the conventional ramp injector, dubbed the cantilevered ramp injector.; A two-pronged numerical approach was employed to investigate the mixing performance and characteristics of the cantilevered injector consisting of, (1) comparison with conventional designs and (2) a parametric study of various cantilevered injector geometries. A laminar, three-dimensional, multispecies flowsolver was developed in generalized coordinates to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for the flow fields of injected H₂ into high-enthalpy air. The scheme consists of an upwind TVD scheme for discretization of the convective fluxes coupled with a semi-implicit LU-SGS scheme for temporal discretization.; Through analysis of the numerical solutions, it has been shown that the cantilevered ramp injector is a viable fuel injection system facilitating enhanced mixing of fuel and air. Comparison with conventional designs have revealed a competitive and, in most cases, superior design in the context of mixing performance. A strong counter-rotating vortex pair generated under the cantilevered injector was shown to be the distinguishing characteristic of this design and largely accounted for improved mixing performance. Results also elucidated the importance of a coupled design approach between the fuel injector and propulsive duct to optimize mixing performance.