Computation of shock-induced combustion using a detailed methane-air mechanism
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Abstract
The shock-induced combustion of methane-air mixtures in hypersonic flows is investigated using a new reaction mechanism consisting of 19 reacting species and 52 elementary reactions. This reduced model is derived from a full kinetic mechanism via the detailed reduction technique. Zero-dimensional computations of several shocktube experiments are presented first. The computed values for ignition delay and flame speed are in close agreement with experimental data and with results obtained using a full mechanism. The new reaction mechanism is then combined with a fully implicit Navier-Stokes CFD code to simulate two-dimensional and axisymmetric shock-induced combustion experiments of stoichiometric methane-air mixtures at a Mach number of M = 6.61. Good agreement with the experiments is obtained. Furthermore, it is shown that previous calculations were unable to accurately predict this type of flow due to their use of severely limited reduced chemical mechanisms. Finally, applications to the ram accelerator concept are also presented, based on a novel double-ramp configuration.