Experimental Investigation of Wall Heat Flux in a Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine

An experimental test campaign was conducted for a rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) using gaseous oxygen and RP-2 at operating pressures of 3–18 atm. The copper chamber outer wall was instrumented with embedded thermocouples to provide insight into heat-flux levels for various locations in the chamber at numerous operating conditions and wave topologies. Results were compared to throat-level heat fluxes assuming conventional constant-pressure combustion using existing correlations found by Bartz. These comparisons show that average heat loads in the RDRE are near the estimated constant-pressure throat-level heat fluxes assuming frozen flow chemistry, but substantially lower than predictions with equilibrium chemistry. Heat fluxes in the detonation wave region appeared to be relatively higher than in the product region downstream of the detonation waves. Generally, the measured heat fluxes fell within a range manageable with conventional cooling methods.