Ignition Characteristics of Supersonic Combustion

Abstract

Detonation may be initiated by two different modes, direct initiation or deflagration-to- detonation transition (DDT). Direct initiation can occur by a strong source such as using exploding wire or high-voltage discharge jets. Nevertheless, this method required a significant amount of energy in order to ensure that the generated blast wave will not separate and decay. A good alternative to direct initiation is Pre-detonator initiation, it depends on initiate the detonation in an ancillary small tube connected to the main tube then the detonation waves propagate to achieve detonation in the main tube. The pre-detonator is one of the most used methods to initiate the detonation due to the high reliability and design simplicity. This article is used to present a short review on experimental studies of supersonic combustion using various types of pre-detonator together with preliminary experimental work on single supersonic combustion experiment by using methane-oxygen and propane-oxygen mixtures. From this initial work, it is shows that equivalence ratio of Propane-Oxygen mixture at 0.6 shows smaller size of the supersonic combustion wave front as compared to the Methane-Oxygen mixture at 0.6 and 0.8.