Abstract
The effects of an arc discharge to create an Air-Spike in a hypersonic flow are currently being studied in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 24-inch Hypersonic Shock Tunnel (RPI HST), modeled computationally, and compared to existing theory. The arc is a high current car battery array-driven, 75- kilowatt peak, self-sustaining electrical discharge in a Mach 10, 260 psia stagnation pressure, and 560 K stagnation temperature flow. In this low enthalpy, ideal gas, condition, schlieren photographs are taken of the apparatus with and without a downstream blunt body, with varying arc powers. Blunt body drag measurements are also made with both hanging and sliding models with fast-response accelerometers, with and without the arc to establish a correlation between arc power and body drag. The computational effort employs the Euler gasdynamic equations to represent a heat source in flow conditions and geometries identical to those tested in the RPI HST. These two results are then compared to early Air-Spike theoretical predictions to qualitatively validate the CFD code and gain a better perspective on the loss mechanisms involved in the experiment.
Original language | English (US) |
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DOIs | |
State | Published - 2001 |
Event | 37th Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit 2001 - Salt Lake City, UT, United States Duration: Jul 8 2001 → Jul 11 2001 |
Other
Other | 37th Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit 2001 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | Salt Lake City, UT |
Period | 7/8/01 → 7/11/01 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Energy Engineering and Power Technology
- Aerospace Engineering
- Control and Systems Engineering
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering