Effect of combustor geometry and fuel injection scheme on the combustion process in a supersonic flow

The combustion process in a hydrogen fueled scramjet combustor with a rearwall-expansion cavity was investigated numerically under inflow conditions of Ma=2.52 with stagnation pressure P0=1.6 Mpa and stagnation temperature T0=1486 K. The numerical solver was first evaluated for supersonic reactive flows in a similar combustor configuration where experimental data is available. Wall-pressure distribution was compared with the experiments, and grid independency analysis and chemical mechanism comparison were conducted. The numerical results showed fairly good agreements with the available experimental data under supersonic combustion conditions. Then the numerical solver was used to study the effects of combustor geometry, fuel injection scheme and injection equivalence ratio on the combustion process. It was found that under the same fuel injection condition, the combustor configuration with a rearwall-expansion cavity is in favor of the supersonic combustion mode and present better ability of thermal choking prevention than the other combustor configurations. For the rearwall-expansion cavity combustor, the supersonic flow field was found to be sensitive to the injector position and injection scheme, but not highly sensitive to the injection pressure. Besides, rearwall-expansion cavity with the combined fuel injection scheme (with an injection upstream the cavity and a direct injection on the rear wall) is an optimized injection scheme during the flame stabilization process.