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Updated: Dec 28, 2025

A Rapid Method for Modeling a Variable Cycle Engine
Published on: August 13, 2019
Mode-locked rotating detonation waves: Experiments and a model equation
James Koch1, Mitsuru Kurosaka1, Carl Knowlen1
1William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-2400, USA.
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 process. The solution fronts become attractors of the engine, i.e., mode-locked rotating detonation waves. We find that denotative energy release competes with dissipation and gain recovery to produce the observed dynamics and a bifurcation structure common to other driven-dissipative systems, such as mode-locked lasers.
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