Basic design scheme for wave rotors

Pressure wave devices use shock waves to transfer energy directly between fluids without additional mechanical components, thus having the potential for increased efficiency. The wave rotor is a promising technology which uses shock waves in a self-cooled dynamic pressure exchange between fluids. For high-pressure, high-temperature topping cycles, it results in increased engine overall pressure and temperature ratio, which in turn generates higher efficiency and lower specific fuel consumption. Designing a wave rotor mainly focuses on predicting the behavior of shock and expansion waves. The extant literature presents numerous examples of wave rotor designs, but most of them rely on complicated numerical analyses as well as computer code developed specifically for this application. This paper presents an initial scheme used for designing wave rotors employing thermodynamic and gasdynamic analysis as well as computational fluid dynamic analysis. Basic theory and a simplified model of the wave rotor are used to predict the travel time and strength of waves. The model is then refined using a more advanced numerical scheme on the basis of the Lax–Wendroff method and FLUENT, a commercial CFD code.