Investigation of strut-ramp injector in a Scramjet combustor: effect of strut geometry, fuel and jet diameter on mixing characteristics

TL;DR

This study numerically investigates how strut geometry, fuel type, and jet diameter influence mixing in a scramjet combustor, finding that straight struts optimize mixing but larger jet diameters require longer combustors.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the effects of strut geometry and jet diameter on mixing characteristics in scramjet injectors, validated with experimental data.

Findings

Straight strut configuration offers optimal mixing.

Larger jet diameters necessitate longer combustors.

Good agreement between numerical predictions and experimental data.

Abstract

The strut based injector has been found to be one of the most promising injector designs for supersonic combustor, offering en-hanced mixing of fuel and air. The mixing and flow field characteristics of the straight (SS) & tapered strut (TS), with fixed ramp an-gle and height at freestream Mach number 2 in conjunction with fuel injection at Mach 2.3 have been investigated numerically and reported. In the present investigation, hydrogen (H2) and ethylene (C2H4) are injected in oncoming supersonic flow from the back of the strut, where jet to freestream momentum ratio is maintained at 0.79 and 0.69 for H2 & C2H4, respectively. The predicted wall static pressure and species mole fractions at various downstream locations are compared with the experimental data for TS case with 0.6 mm jet diameter and found to be in good agreement. Further, the effect of jet diameter and strut geometry on the near field mixing in strut ramp configuration is discussed for both the fuel. The numerical results are assessed based on various parameters for the performance evaluation of different strut ramp configurations. The SS configuration for both the injectant is found to be an optimum candidate, also it is observed that for higher jet diameter larger combustor length is required to achieve satisfactory near field mixing.