Acta Astronautica 57 (2005) 384 – 389

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Fundamental study of supersonic combustion in pure air flow with

use of shock tunnel
Shigeru Aso∗ , Arif Nur Hakim, Shingo Miyamoto, Kei Inoue, Yasuhiro Tani
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Kyushu University, Japan

Abstract
An experimental study using reflected-type of shock tunnel has been conducted to investigate the phenomena of supersonic
combustion. In the experiment, test air is compressed by reflected shock wave up to stagnation temperature of 2800 K and
stagnation pressure of 0.35 MPa. Heated air is used as a reservoir gas of supersonic nozzle. Hydrogen is injected transversely
through circular hole into freestream of Mach 2. Flow duration is 300
s. Schlieren method and CCD UV camera are used
to obtain information on the shock structures and the region of combustion. The effects of total pressure of injection gas to
the fuel penetration and the region of combustion have been obtained.
© 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction fast mixing and fast combustion with minimum total

Supersonic combustion ramjet (SCRAM-jet) en-
gine is currently one of the promising propulsion
systems for achieving hypersonic airbreathing propul-
sion. In the engine, the flow in the combustor leads
to a short residence time of air and fuel, thus injec-
tion method, mixing and combustion process become
important problems for the success of airbreathing
hypersonic vehicles. To achieve efficient combustion,
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: aso@aero.kyushu-u.ac.jp
(S. Aso), anha@aero.kyushu-u.ac.jp (A.N. Hakim),
shingo-m@aero.kyushu-u.ac.jp (S. Miyamoto),
k-inoue@aero.kyushu-u.ac.jp (K. Inoue), tani@aero.kyushu-u.ac.jp
(Yasuhiro Tani).
pressure loses is required.
There are many experimental studies of this field in
ground-based facilities with the use of vitiation heated
tunnel to generate a supersonic hot flow [1]. This
facility is relatively simple and easy to operate and
has a long test time of the order of seconds or longer.
However, the high-temperature test air delivered to
the combustion chamber contains a large concentra-
tion of H2 O as well as OH radicals. And the existence
of those impurities increases the uncertainty of the
supersonic combustion experiments. To solve such a
problem, impulse facility can be considered as an al-
ternative method. Although the test time is very short,
impulse facilities are capable of providing the required
high total temperature and total pressure without hav-
ing problem of test air with H2 O and OH radicals

0094-5765/$ - see front matter © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2005.03.055
 S. Aso et al. / Acta Astronautica 57 (2005) 384 – 389
which causes a condition different from the real flight
combustion condition.
There are some types of impulse facility used in the
supersonic combustion experiments, i.e. shock tube
[2], expansion tube [3,4] and reflected shock tunnel
[5]. However, the reflected shock tunnel offers longer
test time than the shock tube and the expansion tube.
In the reflected tunnel, high pressure and high temper-
ature reservoir gas is made by compressing test air by
incident shock wave and reflected shock wave.
The requirement of efficient injection method and
flame holding has motivated the study of mixing [6,7],
as well as combustion [6], of transverse injection into
supersonic crossflow. The method is expected to gener-
ate recirculation upstream of injection point as flame-
holding. When fuel is injected into supersonic cross-
flow through nozzle, the fuel flow will expand and
interact with it. As a result, a three-dimensional bow
shock is formed upstream of the injection point and
interacts with the boundary layer, resulting in a separa-
tion region. The second separated zone which appears
downstream of injection point, between the injection
point and the boundary layer reattachment point is also
expected to operate as flame holding.
In addition to recirculation zone, the total pressure
of injection has an important role in controlling the
combustion, due to different environments of chamber
during the flight. Change of total pressure of injection
will affect the penetration of fuel [7], thus the condi-
tion of combustion.
In the present study, transverse injection has been
conducted through a circular nozzle into supersonic
crossflow of Mach 2 generated by reflected shock tun-
nel. The objective is to obtain a better understanding
of the behaviors of supersonic combustion when total
pressure of injection is changed.
2. Facility and experiment description
2.1. Experimental facility
The experiments have been performed in the re-
flected shock tunnel at Kyushu University, Japan. In
the shock tunnel, test air is compressed by reflected
shock wave up to stagnation pressure 0.35 MPa and
total temperature of 2800 K. Heated air is used as a
reservoir gas and provided into test section through
385
two-dimensional supersonic nozzle of Mach number
of 2.
The schematic of experimental setup is shown in
Fig. 1. The test section, whose cross section is rect-
angular, is 44 mm wide and 33 mm high. Hydrogen
or Helium was injected transversely through circu-
lar sonic nozzle of 2 mm diameter into freestream by
using a solenoid valve operated by time control sys-
tem. The primary parameter used in the experiment
is the total pressure ratio, p0j /p0 (p0j : total pressure
of injected gas, p0 : total pressure of free stream). The
pressure ratio is set to 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5, as shown in
Table 1.
2.2. Measurements of test conditions
To determine the experimental conditions, measure-
ments of total pressure and total temperature of reser-
voir gas were conducted. The total pressure of test air
was obtained by measuring stagnation pressure using
Kistler pressure transducer located in driven section,
10 mm before nozzle throat. On the other hand, mea-
surement of the stagnation heat flux of blunt body has
been conducted in no-injection case to obtain the total
temperature of test air. The measurement was made
using a semi-sphere cylinder platinum with thin film
heat transfer gauge located at the center of test section
on the same position with injection point. Assuming
an isentropic expansion of test air from the driven sec-
tion to the test section and using combined relation-
ship of stagnation pressure of reservoir and the heat
flux in the test section, the total temperature of test air
in the test section can be obtained.
Fig. 2 shows time history of wall temperature of
semi-sphere cylinder model. The temperature be-
gins to increase when starting shock wave arrived to
body surface. Figs. 3 and 4 show the time history of
stagnation heat flux calculated from measured wall
temperature data and the calculated total tempera-
ture, respectively. The total temperature of test air
begin to increase rapidly just as starting shock wave
arrives to the surface of gauge and get relatively con-
stant at about 2800 K. In the supersonic combustion,
if the static temperature sufficiently high for fuel
self-ignition, no additional heating devices is needed
to be provided. In the present investigation, the air
static temperature at the location of injection is about
1550 K, which is quite enough for the self-ignition.
386 S. Aso et al. / Acta Astronautica 57 (2005) 384 – 389

PRESSURE
TRANSDUCER INJECTION

LOW
DIAPHRAGM TO DUMP
PRESSURE
TANK
SECTION

Fig. 1. Schematic of experimental setup.

Table 1 1.5E+07
Experimental conditions

Gas Freestream Injectant

Air He, H2 1.0E+07

qw [W/m2]
Total pressure 0.350 MPa 0.175 MPa
0.350 MPa
0.525 MPa
Total temperature 2800 K 290 K 5.0E+06
Mach number 2 1

0.0E+00
800 600 700 800 900 1000 1100
time [microsec]
700
Fig. 3. Time history of heat flux.
600
Twall [K]

500 To visualize the shock structure of the supersonic

flowfield, Schlieren method has been conducted. The
400 instantaneous light source of less than 1
s of ex-
posure period is used. Helium and Hydrogen were
300 used as injectant gas in this experiment to investi-
gate shock structure in both non-reacting and reacting
200 cases. CCD-UV camera was also used to observe the
600 700 800 900 1000 1100 OH self-luminescence generated in hydrogen combus-
time [microsec] tion to investigate the combustion processes in the su-
personic flowfield.
Fig. 2. Time history of wall temperature of platinum thin film heat
transfer gauge.

3. Results and discussions

Test time in this experiment, as shown in Fig. 4,
is defined as the test time of about 300
s, in which
the total temperature remains constant. Table 1 sum-
marizes the experimental conditions for the present
investigation.
To investigate the condition of the combustion phe-
nomena with relation to the shock structure in the
flowfield, both Schlieren method and CCD UV cam-
era were employed.
 S. Aso et al. / Acta Astronautica 57 (2005) 384 – 389 387

5000
test time (~300 microsec)
4000

3000
T0 [K]

2000

1000

0
600 700 800 900 1000 1100
time [microsec]

Fig. 4. Time history of total temperature of freestream.

Fig. 5 shows Schlieren images of flowfield. In all

cases, small recirculation region can be seen just up-
stream of the injection point. However, due to the
small diameter of hole and the sensitivity of camera,
the recirculation region only appeared very small. Fig.
3a–c shows the images of non-reacting flow cases.
As reported previously [2], the total pressure of in-
jection will affect the height in crossflow. The images
indicated that when the injection total pressure is in-
creased, the bow shock formed by the injection jet be-
comes stronger and the angle of shock wave increases.
Also the increase of total pressure of the injection jet
results in the increase of total pressure lose of the flow.
Additional oblique shock wave is observed in the joint
part of the wall located at 72 mm downstream of the
injection point.
Similar results are also observed in reacting flow
(hydrogen injection). However, comparing Fig. 5b and
d, it can be found that shock wave generated in react-
ing flow appeared weaker than those in non-reacting
flow. This difference of shock wave strength might
come frome the difference of molecular weight of He
and H2 .
In the hydrogen combustion, the condition of the
combustion can investigated by observing the pres-
ence of OH-radical. By recording the self-luminesence
of OH radicals using CCD UV camera, location
and intensity of the reaction zone were observed.
Fig. 6 shows the intensified averaged image of self-
luminescence of OH-radical taken by CCD UV cam-
Fig. 5. Schlieren images of flowfield: (a) Helium injection,
p0j /p0 = 0.5; (b) Helium injection, p0j /p0 = 1.0; (c) Helium
injection, p0j /p0 = 1.5; (d) Hydrogen injection, p0j /p0 = 1.0.
era and the Schlieren image of the helium injection
when p0j /p0 = 1.0. The reaction started at about
45 mm downstream of the injection point, and grew
larger as far as downstream. This distance between
injection point and location of the reaction start indi-
cates that the induction time of combustion is in the
order of 10−5 s, thus reasonable for this experimental
condition. However, the reaction cannot be found at
the recirculation just upstream and downstream of
the injection point. The reason may result in the poor
sensitivity of the camera.
The strong reaction is established after oblique
shock generated by joint of wall, about 80 mm down-
stream of the injection point and suggests that to
accelerate the reaction it can be very useful using
shock generator.
388 S. Aso et al. / Acta Astronautica 57 (2005) 384 – 389
Fig. 6. UV images of the combustion (hydrogen injection,
p0j /p0 = 1.0) and the position of shock wave generagted by joint
wall (helium injection p0j /p0 = 1.0).
Fig. 7. UV images in case of hydrogen injection: (a) p0j /p0 =0.5;
(b) p0j /p0 = 1.0; (c) p0j /p0 = 1.5.
Fig. 7 shows the reaction zone in different case of
injection total pressure. The images show when the
injection total pressure increases, the high penetration
of fuel can be achieved. Therefore, reaction zone ex-
pands to the center of flowfield.
4. Conclusions
The study of supersonic combustion of hydrogen
has been conducted by using a reflected-type shock
tunnel which generated a stable supersonic air flow
of Mach number of 2 with the total temperature of
2800 K and the total pressure of 0.35 MPa. The static
temperature in the test section is about 1550 K which
enables the supersonic combustion with self-ignition.
The Schlieren images show that the increase of in-
jection pressure generated strong bow shock, resulting
in the pressure loses.
The combustion begins almost at the same location
for all injection total pressure cases, about 45 mm
downstream of the injection point, which indicates
the reasonable induction time. After the oblique shock
generated by joint part of the wall located at 72 mm
downstream from the injection point, the strong re-
action is established. This demonstrates the shock
generator be an effective method to accelerate the
combustion.
The increase of the injection total pressure raises the
penetration of fuel; thus, the reaction zone expands to
the center of flowfield.
Acknowledgements
We really appreciate Mr. Minoru Orino and Mr.
Yuzo Inokuchi of Department of Aeronautics and As-
tronautics, Kyushu University, for every support and
help in the experiments.
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