Proposed Thrust Profile Design of Pulse Detonation Engine (PDE) for Aerospace Applications

Abstract

The paper deals with challenging assignment of development and optimization of pulse detonation engine (PDE) to test it in aerospace system configurations. Our researchers have successfully developed and deployed static test bed for PDE firing earlier. This has been trial proven in dynamic PDE firings in last one decade. In the present case of design of propulsion system for aerospace vehicle, which includes trial setup for prolonged testing in autonomous mode, pneumatic air/oxygen supply (compressed), fuel supply, ignition system, command generation system (wired/remote), recorders/telemetry, safety systems including thrust stand hardware need to be system engineered meticulously. Extensive testing of subsystem/subassembly levels need to incorporated before to get confidence to function in dynamic environment. This included 150 bar compressed air delivery system, which needs to operate in highly pulsating environment at test bed. A small recorder system is also installed to record four channels of data acquisition system (DAQ) to validate the performance of PDE; full function trial run in autonomous configuration resulted in successful test runs, repeatedly. It generated a lot of data to predict system performance to make it function better. All these exercises are executed simultaneously and efforts are still on in this regard. Careful data analysis has resulted in validation of predicted mission parameters in actual trials at various test conditions. The same data is utilized to inject in experimental aerospace vehicle (EAV) six DOF model and tailor it to meet these applications. The performance of the vehicle in terms of speeds, range, intercept dynamics, weight advantage and compact form factor achievement, etc. need to be explored in this paper.