Flow Characteristics of Liquid Ramjet Engines using Two Color PIV

A two color PIV technique has been developed for visualization of complex and high speed flow in a ramjet combustor. Two color PIV has the advantages that velocity distributions in high speed flowfields can be measured simply by varying the time interval between two different laser beams and a directional ambiguity problem can be solved by color separation, and then a signal-to-noise ratio can be increased through nearly perfect cross-correlation. As a basic research of the ramjet engine, a 2-D shaped combustor with two symmetric air intakes has been manufactured and an experimental study has been conducted using a two color PIV technique. The flow characteristics such as recirculation zones, intake air mixing and turbulent kinetic energy have been investigated varying inlet angles and dome heights. It was found that the primary recirculation zone is affected mainly by the dome height, whereas the secondary recirculation zone is influenced by the air inlet angle.