| For the past decade the miniaturization of power generation devices has been a fascinating research topic. With the available micro fabrication methods and high specific energy of the hydrocarbon fuels, it gives us a compelling reason to explore and develop the possibilities of using such fuels for power generation on a chip. The Internal Combustion Wave Disc Engine (IC WDE) is one such concept. It is an unsteady flow device using energy exchanges via waves. The waves travel in channels which are arranged inside the disc, to extract work, to propel the disc, and to produce torque. The first part of the work discusses the working principle of the WDE and the gas dynamic relations that are used later to establish the gas dynamic model of the wave disc engine. Challenges of micro combustion are also presented. The second part of the work involves numerical simulations of an axial wave rotor that has been successfully commercialized as COMPREXRTM and can be seen as a predecessor among the unsteady flow devices. FLUENTRTM is used for these simulations and results are compared with a 1 D algebraic code developed and being used to design wave rotor porting and how to employ the same approach for the modeling of a WDE. In the third part of this work, supporting experimental work is presented that covers flow studies inside 4 different microchannels machined in a Si wafer. Friction factor are determined and compared with the available data from the literature. |
