Experimental verification of air-breathing continuous rotating detonation fueled by hydrogen

A direct-connect experimental facility is built up in order to demonstrate the feasibility of air-breathing continuous rotating detonation (CRD). An air-heater is used to produce supersonic and vitiated air with total temperature of 860 K, which corresponds to a Mach (Ma) 4 flight condition. Additionally, a pre-detonator tangent to the detonation combustor is adopted to initiate the mixture of the vitiated air and room-temperature hydrogen. The results show that CRD is successfully sustained and propagating with velocity of 1280 m/s while the supersonic air flow in the isolator is not affected by the CRD. A long-duration test is further conducted, and it is shown that the CRD has worked continuously for more than three seconds. The results suggest that the long-time working of air-breathing CRD with a supersonic air flow into the CRD combustor is available in principle.