Mode-Locked Rotating Detonation Waves: Experiments and a Model Equation

Abstract

Direct observation of a Rotating Detonation Engine combustion chamber has enabled the extraction of the kinematics of its detonation waves. These records exhibit a rich set of instabilities and bifurcations arising from the interaction of coherent wave fronts and global gain dynamics. We develop a model of the observed dynamics by recasting the Majda detonation analog as an autowave. The solution fronts become attractors of the engine; i.e., mode-locked rotating detonation waves. We find that detonative energy release competes with dissipation and gain recovery to produce the observed dynamics and a bifurcation structure common to driven-dissipative systems, such as mode-locked lasers.

arXiv comment10 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (3)

• PyClaw: Accessible, Extensible, Scalable Tools for Wave Propagation Problems
• A stability index for detonation waves in Majda's model for reacting flow
• Influence of Discrete Sources on Detonation Propagation in a Burgers Equation Analog System

Cited by in corpus (10)

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• Modeling Thermodynamic Trends of Rotating Detonation Engines
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• Data-Driven Surrogates of Rotating Detonation Engine Physics with Neural ODEs and High-Speed Camera Footage
• Multi-scale Physics of Rotating Detonation Engines: Autosolitons and Modulational Instabilities
• Structural Inference of Networked Dynamical Systems with Universal Differential Equations
• Spatio-Temporal Mode-locking in Quadratic Nonlinear Media
• Data-Driven Modeling of Nonlinear Traveling Waves
• Damped-driven system of bouncing droplets leading to deterministic diffusive behavior
• On the two separate decay time scales of a detonation wave modelled by the Burgers equation and their relation to its chaotic dynamics