Effects of fuel cracking on combustion characteristics of a supersonic model combustor

• A kerosene heater is used to heat liquid RP-3 to ~780 K with neglectable cracking.
• Ethylene is used as the surrogate fuel of fully cracked RP-3.
• Supersonic combustion characteristics of ethylene and heated RP-3 are compared.
• The two fuels have remarkably different combustion characteristics under low ER.
• Increased ER narrows combustion characteristic differences between the two fuels.

The compositions of endothermic hydrocarbon fuels in cooling channels of regenerative cooled scramjet engines change along with fuel cracking. To investigate the effect of fuel compositions variation resulting from cracking on the combustion characteristics of supersonic combustors, a series of combustion tests with a wide range of equivalence ratios were conducted in a direct-connected test rig under the inflow conditions of Ma=3.46 and Tt=1430 K. The combustion characteristics of room temperature ethylene and vaporized China no. 3 aviation kerosene (RP-3) with negligible cracking were analyzed and compared based on the measured static pressure distributions along the combustor wall, fuel specific impulses, flame luminosity images and the one-dimensional average flow parameter distributions calculated by a quasi-one-dimensional data analysis method. The experimental results showed that the differences between the combustion characteristics of vaporized RP-3 and ethylene were sensitive to equivalence ratio. Under low equivalence ratios, vaporized RP-3 and ethylene had remarkably different combustion characteristics. Ethylene had an obvious higher static pressure level, specific impulse and combustion efficiency than vaporized RP-3 for its higher activity. The difference of combustion performance between vaporized RP-3 and ethylene was narrowed with the increase of equivalence ratio and the corresponding combustion condition improvement. When the equivalence ratio increased to 1.09, vaporized RP-3 and ethylene had tiny difference in combustion performance.