Computational Study of Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine-Based Combined Cycle Engine Concept

A study is proposed to develop and refine modeling capabilities suited for feasibility assessment of novel Rotating Detonation Rocket-based Combined Cycle (RDRCC) engines. Recent progress in Rotating Detonation Combustors (RDCs) may serve as enabling technologies which revive the Ducted Rocket Combined Cycle concept, which has numerous theoretical merits over more orthodox Turbine-based Combined Cycles and has experimentally shown substantially enhanced thrust performance, but never reached full development and implementation due to the weight and complexity associated with the hydrodynamic mixing necessary to achieve laboratory performance. Due to the complexity of both compressible turbulent mixing as well as the internal ballistics of RDCs, full resolution of such a combined cycle engine becomes enormously computationally heavy and difficult. Therefore, a multi-fidelity modeling scheme is proposed, leveraging lightweight shock-capturing techniques and a traditional compressible Navier-Stokes solver for components such as inlets, isolators, and exhaust nozzles, applying more involved and advanced LES techniques to assess RDC-exhaust plume mixing, and applying a proprietary, lightweight quasi-one-dimensional RDC internal flowfield solver for plume prediction. Combined, these techniques will be used to assess a conceptual RDRCC engine to demonstrate the impact of supplanting traditional rocket combustors with RDCs in a canonical ducted rocket topology. Phase I work will focus on refinement of the computational methods themselves necessary to assemble the multifidelity model, and Phase II work will experimentally validate the computational results, and refine the engine concept itself.