Jiang Zonglin, director of the Key Laboratory of High-Temperature Gas Dynamics at the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led a team that published an important paper in the Chinese Journal of Aeronautics on November 29th, in which he mentioned their development of a “standing oblique detonation ramjet engine” (Sodramjet) that was used in a hypersonic wind tunnel test flight to test its thrust, fuel efficiency, and fuel efficiency. It has demonstrated unprecedented performance in terms of operational stability.
Chinese military journal “Ordnance Science and Technology” believes that this “standing oblique detonation ramjet engine” (Sodramjet) is the biggest technological innovation to the current hypersonic aircraft ramjet. It uses the “detonation effect” in the hypersonic combustion process, and the detonation is considered to be the ultimate form of the combustion process, which usually releases more than 70% of energy in millimeter-level space and microsecond-level time. Its thermal efficiency is half higher than that of the traditional isobaric combustion mode. And the use of ” detonation mode” as hypersonic propulsion, with its extremely high reaction efficiency, allows for a significant reduction in engine size and a significant increase in the engine’s thrust margin.
According to the paper, the engine design is quite simple, with no moving parts, and consists of a single-stage inlet, hydrogen fuel injector, and combustion chamber, with the combustion chamber opening toward the upper end of the inlet. Jiang’s team put the engine into a powerful wind tunnel for testing, and it was able to simulate flight conditions up to nine times the speed of sound. As high-speed winds hit the intake, they generate high-temperature, high-pressure shock waves that create a blast wave to propel the engine when they contact the hydrogen fuel in the combustion chamber. The moment the blast wave is generated is quite bright and more intense than the previous ramjet combustion. According to the film provided by the research team, when the engine starts, the opening in the combustion chamber glows like a spaceship in Star Wars.
Theoretically, this aspirated engine can travel up to 16 times the speed of sound, and the only wind tunnel in the world that can simulate this type of flight is precisely the ultra-large hypersonic surge wind tunnel JF-12, also known as the “Hypergolic Dragon,” developed by researcher Jiang Zonglin. It is the world’s largest wind tunnel and the first ground-based aerodynamic experiment facility in the world that can reproduce flight conditions.
As a result, China will be the first country in the world to develop a mature super-combustible ramjet engine and hypersonic vehicle. In addition to future commercial trans-atmospheric hypersonic aircraft, this technology will also give China a significant head start in the development of hypersonic cruise missiles.