Methane-oxygen detonation characteristics at elevated pre-detonation pressures

The detonation characteristics of methane-oxygen mixtures at pre-detonation pressures of 101-1,013 kPa were investigated in a detonation tube. Both pure methane-oxygen mixtures and mixtures with argon dilution were explored. Measurements made include cell sizes via soot foil, wave speed via high speed ion probes / pressure transducers, and temperature / H2O molar concentration profiles via 100 kHz absorption spectroscopy. Measured cell widths agreed with predicted cell widths based on a ZND length correlation. In addition, the power law fit of cell width with pre-detonation pressure agreed with previous data at less than 101 kPa. Measured detonation wave speeds agreed within 3% of Chapmen-Jouguet for all cases. H2O molar density and temperature were successfully captured up to 507 kPa. However, above 507 kPa pre-detonation pressure, low signal to noise ratio and poor spectral fits at the extreme conditions of the von Neumann spike resulted in unacceptable uncertainty. These results provide a unique dataset to validate kinetics models and high-fidelity computation fluid dynamics codes for methane-oxygen detonations at elevated pre-detonation pressures relevant to rotating detonation rocket engines. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of The Combustion Institute.