LES of supersonic combustion in a scramjet engine model

In this study, Large Eddy Simulation (LES) has been used to examine supersonic flow and combustion in a model scramjet combustor. The LES model is based on an unstructured finite volume discretization, using total variational diminishing flux reconstruction, of the filtered continuity, momentum, enthalpy, and passive/reactive scalar equations, used to describe the combustion process. The configuration used is similar to the laboratory scramjet at the Institute for Chemical Propulsion of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and consists of a one-sided divergent channel with a wedge-shaped flameholder at the base of which hydrogen is injected. Here, we investigate supersonic flow with hydrogen injection and supersonic flow with hydrogen injection and combustion. For the purpose of validation, the LES results are compared with experimental data for velocity and temperature at different cross-sections. In addition, qualitative comparisons are also made between predicted and measured shadowgraph images. The LES computations are capable of predicting both the non-reacting and reacting flowfields reasonably well—in particular we notice that the LES model identifies and differentiates between peculiarities of the flowfields found in the experiments.