Atomizing Liquid Fuel Injector for Hypersonic Propulsion

In hypersonic flight vehicles, the limited residence time of fuel in the engine necessitates extremely fast mixing and combustion. Conventionally atomized fuel droplets are typically too large and polydisperse (several to hundreds of microns in diameter) to mix and completely burn during the short 1-3ms residence time in the engine. Busek proposes to investigate a novel approach for creating monodisperse micron-sized droplets at the high mass flowrates required for hypersonic combustion engines. Busek has already achieved the desired droplet sizes and performed successful combustion testing of unmodified JP-8 at low mass flowrates. The goal of the Phase 1 effort shall be to test an augmentation technique for increasing mass flowrates by 1000-fold, culminating in a proof-of-concept functional and characterized fuel injector.