Investigation of pulse detonation combustors — Axial turbine system

Abstract A circular array of six pulse detonation combustors is integrated to an axial turbine, to extract power from the detonative combustion process that is ignited cyclically in the array of tubes. The effect of pulsing frequency, fill fraction and rotor revolution frequency on the extracted power is ascertained. A method is presented to estimate the component thermal efficiency using experimentally acquired variables. The resulting thermal efficiency values suggest that for a regime of operating conditions, the detonation cycle is more efficient than the Brayton cycle utilizing deflagration. This range of operating conditions appears to depend on the interaction of the different sectors — that are in different operational phases due to cyclic ignition — with the turbine.