Key Technology and Experimental Results of the Clean Air Heated Facility for Supersonic Combustion

The scramjet, which is the propulsion of hypersonic vehicle, has become the focus in many military developed countries. The ground tests play an important role in the research of scramjet. There is defect of test medium contamination (the thermochemical characteristic of the ground test medium is different from that of the flight medium) in existing ground test facilities for scramjet combustor experiment. To solve the problem of test medium contamination, the first clean air heated facility of China for scramjet combustor experiment is designed. The key technology of designing the clean air heated facility is summarized. By using bypass duct, combustor model is protected from high temperature. To reduce the switching time between main duct and bypass duct, solenoid valve and water-cooled system were used. Having centrosymmetric structure, the heat radiating area of the facility and heat loss of the facility are much lower than others. Clean air heated facility is adopted to conduct experiment, which is the first experiment of China in clean air inflow, research on hydrogen-fueled and ethylene-fueled ignition and combustion for scramjet combustor at different equivalence ratio. Successful ignition and sustained combustion of hydrogen has been achieved. Successful ethylene ignition and sustained main stream combustion is achieved with normal fuel injection and taking hydrogen as pilot flame. Experiment result shows that the wall pressure of combustor model rises when the equivalence ratio of hydrogen rises. As the wall pressure of combustor model rises, the pressure disturbance influences the shock train in the upstream.