• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• v.y2005m4
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• pp.1-1
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• 2005

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA) has been conducting research and development of the Scramjet engines and their derivative combined cycle engines as hypersonic propulsion system for space access. Its history will be introduced first, and its recent advances, focusing on the engine performance progress, will follow. Finally, future plans for a flight test of scramjet and ground test of combined cycle engine will be introduced. Two types of test facilities for testing those hypersonic engines. namely, the 'Ramjet Engine Test Facility (RJTF)' and the 'High Enthalpy Shock Tunnel (HIEST)' were designed and fabricated during 1988 through 1996. These facilities can test engines under simulated flight Mach numbers up to 8 for the former, whereas beyond 8 for the latter, respectively. Several types of hydrogen-fueled scramjet engines have been designed, fabricated and tested under flight conditions of Mach 4, 6 and 8 in the RJTF since 1996. Initial test results showed that the thrust was insufficient because of occurrence of flow separation caused by combustion in the engines. These difficulty was later eliminated by boundary-layer bleeding and staged fuel injection. Their results were compared with theory to quantify achieved engine performances. The performances with regards to combustion, net thrust are discussed. We have reached the stage where positive net thrust can be attained for all the test coditions. Results of these engine tests will be discussed. We are also intensively attempting the improvement of thrust performance at high speed condition of Mach 8 to 15 in High Enthalpy Shock Tunnel (HIEST). Critical issues for this purposemay be air/fuel mixing enhancement, and temperature control of combustion gas to avoid thermal dissociation. To overcome these issues we developed the Hypermixier engine which applies stream-wise vortices for mixing enhancement, and the M12-engines which optimizes combustor entrance temperature. Moreover, we are going to conduct the flight experiment of the Hypermixer engine by utilizing flight test infrastructure (HyShot) provided by the University of Queensland in fall of 2005 for comparison with the HIEST result. The plan of the flight experiment is also presented.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.34-41
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• 2021

A commercial HVOF torch (originally designed for coating applications) has been modified as a high temperature flow source for material testing. In this study, a water cooled commercial Gardon gauge was used to measure heat fluxes at four locations away from the nozzle exit. The cooling water temperature data were used to calculate calorimetric heat fluxes at the same locations. The heat fluxes from both methods were compared and the calorimetric heat fluxes were found to be many times higher than the Gardon gauge heat fluxes. A hypothesis is applied to the calorimetric method to understand the discrepancy seen between the methods. The Gardon gauge heat fluxes are seen to be in the range of the hypothesized calorimetric calculations. This can be considered as a considerable validation for the hypothesis, but further refinement needed using appropriate numerical models.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.584-587
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• 2011

An internal flow aerodynamic test was performed for a Mach 5 scramjet engine. The test was done without fuel injection, as a preliminary test for the combustion test. Test engine is an engineering model with intake cross-section of $70mm{\times}200mm$ and total length of 1.7m. Test facility is a blowdown-type, high enthalpy, hypersonic facility. 19 pressures were measured through the holes on the model surface along the engine internal flow passage. It was found that the facility start is possible, and also supersonic flow is maintained inside the engine.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.339-347
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• 2022

The post chamber in hybrid rocket is installed to induce additional increase in combustion enthalpy by allowing continuous burning of the liquefied fuels. When paraffin wax fuel is used, unsteady pressure oscillations are observed only at the beginning of combustion. This study intends to investigate the effect of additional combustion of liquefied fuel droplets on the occurrence of unsteady pressure fluctuations. For this, the combustion in post-chamber was visualized and image analysis using POD(Proper Orthogonal Decomposition) technique was performed. In addition, the hypothesis was proposed on the occurrence of unsteady pressure oscillations by identifying the modes including the behavior of droplets through mode reconstruction. Conducting a series of combustion tests, the amount of liquefied fuel flowing into the post chamber and the generation of fuel droplets were controlled. Also, the changes in frequency characteristic of unsteady pressure oscillation were monitored. As a result, the unsteady pressure oscillations observed in paraffin wax combustion were the result of additional combustion of fuel droplets generated in the post chamber.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.337-344
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• 2011

The humidification of reactant gases is crucial for efficiently operating PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) fuel cell systems and for improving the durability of these systems. The recycle of the energy and water vapor of exhaust gas improves the system performance especially in the case of automotive application. The available humidification methods are steam injection, nozzle spray, humidification by enthalpy wheel, membrane humidifier, etc. However, these methods do not satisfy certain requirements such as compact design, efficient operation and control. In this study, a hybrid humidification system consisting of a membrane humidifier and exhaust-air recirculation units was developed and the humidification performance of this hybrid humidifier was analyzed. Finally, a new practical method for optimal design of PEM-fuel-cell humidification system is proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.1-13
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• 2020

The characterization of aging of the pyrotechnic device is conducted thermally, chemically, and spectroscopically. The device is comprised of two parts: (i) igniter composed of Zr and (ii) pyrotechnic delay composed of ZrNi alloy. The thermally induced chemical reaction is identified through Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Thermogravimetry Analysis (TGA). The peak deconvolution of the themo-chemical data is used to estimate the enthalpy change of each metallic fuel component. Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) are used for chemical species analysis. The decomposition of oxidants by moisture significantly affected the fuel aging, and the formation of oxide film and metal oxide on the fuel surface gave rise to the thermal energy decrease.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.75-80
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• 2013

In this study, a forced ignition method with a plasma jet torch is studied in Mach 2 laboratory scaled wind-tunnel. The hyper-mixer is used as a mixer. For two normal injection cases, the one is collided against a wedge plate of the hyper-mixer and the other is directly injected into the cold main flow. For the first case, the hyper-mixer disperses the injected fuel, leading to the mixing enhancement. Furthermore, the fuel-air mixture is provided into the plasma hot gas, which enhances the combustion performance. However, the direct injection into the main flow method spends amount of fuel without ignition in the cold supersonic flow. In the end, for the forced combustion, it is important to supply the fuel-air mixture into the heat source.

• 한국연소학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2013.06a
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• pp.45-46
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• 2013

Stabilization characteristics of highly $N_2$-diluted $CH_4-O_2$ flame in an axially two-section porous inert medium were experimentally investigated for its application to the waste gas scrubber in semiconductor manufacturing processes. The flame behaviors were observed with respect to the fuel and $N_2$ flow rates and the equivalence ratios. As a result, four kinds of flame behaviors such as stable, flashback crossing the interface, blowout and sudden extinction were observed. It was also found that there exists two flame regime divided by a critical fuel flow rate. In addition, the flame stability was discussed based on the $N_2$ index which means the abatement capacity of our combustor in scrubbing the waste gas from the semiconductor processes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• v.y2005m4
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• pp.198-202
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• 2005

Gas generator is the equipment to produce high enthalpy gas used to generate sufficient power to operate turbine and pump system for propellant feeding in liquid rocket engine. Since the limit in operating temperature is imposed due to turbine blade, the gas generator has to be operated at the temperature far below stoichiometric maintaining fuel rich combustion. In this research, fundamental study was performed to understand the non-equilibrium combustion process with in-house code and CFD-ACE as well.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Combustion
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.32-36
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• 2002

A numerical study was carried out to investigate combustion phenomena in a model Scramjet engine, which had been experimentally studied at the University of Tokyo using a high-enthalpy supersonic wind tunnel. The main airflow was Mach number 2.0 and the total temperature of hot flow was 1800K. Equivalence ratio was set to be 0.26 which is higher than that of experiment to investigate the effect of strong precombustion shock. The results showed that self-ignition occurred at the rear bottom wall of the combustor and combined with the shear layer flame between fuel jet and main airflow. Then, precombustion shock was generated at the step location and reversely enhanced the mixing and combustion process behind the shock. Due to the high equivalence ratio, the precombustion shock moved upstream of the step compared with that of experiment.