Chemical composition and mass flow measurements in a supercritical reactive flow for hypersonic real-time application

In the framework of the hypersonic propulsion, ensured with fuel-cooled Supersonic Combustion Ramjet, it is necessary to provide adapted measurement methods for the cooling regulation as for the control of the engine thrust. The sensors should be robust because of the extreme in-flight conditions, of vehicle acceleration and vibration, of the fluid temperature (1500 K) and pressure (3.5 MPa) and of the multicomponent supercritical mixture. Their response time should be lower than one second. Therefore, a large range of real time and on-line measurement methods has been tested and some of these methods among the most promising are presented in this paper. The aim is not to necessarily develop a new technology but to evaluate the feasibility and the adaptability of existing ones for our purpose, even if those are not especially dedicated for such extreme conditions. First, a numerical analysis is conducted and second, some of the techniques are experimentally tested. Two of them, the sonic throat and the Fourier Transform Infra Red spectroscopy (FTIR), appear to be particularly promising and allow only few percents of uncertainty. The first one gives information on the mass flow rate of a supercritical reactive mixture. The second one characterizes the chemical composition before injection in the combustion chamber, for mole fraction greater than 5-10%. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.