Aerothermal analysis of a Wave Rotor

With the development of energy and propulsion industry, there are increasing requirements in the improvement of system performance. Wave rotor, or called pressure exchanger, is a device which has potential to achieve the compression process or as a turbine machine by its unsteady flow process in channels. The technology has shown great power to enhance the performance and operating characteristics of a variety of engines and machinery utilizing thermodynamic topping cycles. Although there have been a variety of applications since the early year, wave rotor is still not widely used and is barely known to engineers due to the imperfect study result so far, which the imperfection is result from the poor measure and analysis tools in the past. Nowadays, with advanced technology, the research on wave rotor is risen again. The aim of this article is to do the aerothermal analysis to wave rotor. By creating a simple system model with certain geometry and features, then using numerical analysis tool like Fluent simulate the unsteady flow process. Then finally, according to the results, discuss the influence of in-channel fluid thermal behaviors and its result to the thermal properties of system.