Experimental and Computational Design and Testing of a Valve Less Pulsejet Engine for the Application of Micro Air Vehicle

Pulsejet engines are the different forms of jet propulsion engines (without rotary components) for air and ground vehicles. In the classification of the pulsejet engines, valveless pulse jet engines contain less weight and able to result in more thrust to weight ratio. Concerning the air and ground vehicle applications, valueless pulsejet engines are used in go-karts, UAVs, MAVs, missiles, and drones. In general, the Micro Air Vehicle designed with a small piston engine with propellers to obtain driving force. But this type of propeller engines has altitude limitations. To overcome these limitations, in the present paper, an attempt has been made to develop a scale down working model of valveless pulsejet engine, which can be used for an alternative solution for the propulsive applications of a Micro Air Vehicle (MAV). At the initial level of this work, the general geometrical and payload conditions of the MAV have been considered. The operational conditions of the MAV's will enable us to understand the required parameters such as flow field inside the combustion chamber and the required pressure rise within the combustor (to provide the necessary propulsive force). Finally, the work in this paper has been focused on the CFD analysis of the combustor of the valveless pulse jet engine. This work also aimed to design a prototype of a valveless pulse jet engine which can able to produce a propulsive force