Breakthrough in the Theory of Ramjets

The paper considers the possibilities of increasing the thrust and economic characteristics of a hydrogen-fueled ramjet through the use of detonation combustion of fuel. The computational and experimental work carried out at the Semenov Federal Research Center for Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences proves that the use of continuous-detonation combustion makes it possible to expand the range of the stable and effective operation of the ramjet to the range of flight Mach numbers significantly below 2.0 (up to 1.3–1.5) and significantly above 5.0 (at least up to M0 = 8) due to the transition from deflagration combustion of hydrogen to more energy efficient continuous-detonation combustion.