Numerical Investigation of a Nested Double Annular Combustion Chamber Configuration for Rotating Detonation Engine Applications

ABSTRACT Rotating Detonation Engines (RDEs) utilize supersonic combustion to enhance propulsion efficiency while enabling simplified engine architectures. However, in a conventional annular RDE, the central plug reduces thrust density compared to alternative propulsion concepts. To address this limitation, a nested double annular combustion chamber is proposed. This study evaluates the feasibility and performance of the configuration using two-dimensional axisymmetric computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations in ANSYS Fluent. Comparative numerical analyses of single- and double-chamber models were conducted under identical mass flux conditions. The results indicate that the proposed double-chamber configuration achieves comparable performance and can even outperform the single-chamber annular RDE by up to 2.26% in thrust per chamber area. These findings provide valuable insight into the potential of nested annular RDE configurations for improving thrust density and propulsion system compactness in future propulsion applications.