Fuel Ignition and Flame Front Stabilization in Supersonic Flow Using Electric Discharge

Recent achievements in the field of stabilization of the front of high speed combustion using electric discharge are presented. Near-surface discharge at the plane wall between electrodes installed in the plane of the wall is applied in this study. Hydrogen and ethylene directly injected from the wall to the flow with a Mach number M = 2 and an air total temperature T(0) = 300-760 K are used as fuel. The excess fuel coefficient calculated by the total air flow rate in the channel does not exceed ER = 0.1. The value of electric power input into the discharge is W(pl)/H(tot) < 2% of the total flow enthalpy, while the thermal power due to combustion exceeds W(com)/H(tot) > 100% at a low initial gas temperature. Electric discharge is first applied to stabilize combustion under conditions of a fixed separated zone and on the plane wall of the combustion chamber. A two-stage combustion regime is demonstrated. It is shown that the application of electric discharge makes it possible to achieve complete fuel combustion eta > 0.9 in a wide range of experimental parameters.