Professor J.P. Sislian  University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies 4925 Dufferin St., Ontario, Canada M3H 5T6 Phone:   +1-416-667-7737 Fax:       +1-416-667-7799          Email:     sislian (at_sign) caius.utias.utoronto.ca Web:      Click Here

Professor Sislian’s research focus in the High-Speed Vehicle Propulsion System Group is the development of new concepts of “air-breathing” space launchers, as opposed to pure rockets which carry the oxygen needed to burn the fuel. Two such concepts are being explored: the rocket-based combined cycle engine or ramrocket, which combines the rocket and ramjet cycles and hence uses air as the oxidizer in part of its ascent trajectory; and the pure air-breathing engine for space launcher: the shock-induced combustion ramjet or shcramjet, in which heat is added to a premixed hypersonic combustible flow through a detonation wave or shock-induced combustion. The potential benefits of pursuing air-breathing propulsion research for space launchers is to increase the useful payload mass and hence decrease the cost of per kilogram launched by significantly decreasing the amount of liquid oxygen carried aboard by the rocket. The shcramjet concept was born from the difficulties associated with the hypervelocity diffusive burning process taking place in the more commonly know airbreathing scramjet engine. While showing great promise, the scramjet design is hampered by the slow rate of diffusive burning in the combustor at very high flight Mach numbers. This results in a longer combustion chamber than the shcramjet, required to mix adequately the fuel with the incoming air, and release the available energy of the mixture. This translates into a more massive structure of the engine and a more complicated cooling system, which decreases the performance of this type of flight vehicle. Considering that for acceleration to orbit missions, such as single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicles, the engine weight is a major concern, the advantage of the shcramjet mode of heat addition to supersonic flow is not insignificant.

Research objectives are pursued by numerical simulation using the Windows Allocatable Resolver for Propulsion (WARP) code, which is a state of the art 1D-2D-3D, steady-state and time-accurate computational technique for general compressible, turbulent, and chemical nonequilibrium flows, developed in our group. Past research efforts have culminated in the first ever proved of the feasibility of shock-induced combustion ramjet propulsion concept in realistic flow simulation (see Fig. 1). In a recently performed project, the WARP code has been used to numerically simulate the flowfield of a ramrocket with a combination of centrally located and annular rocket exhausting adjacent to the wall of the ejector (see Fig. 2) resulting in a shorter ejector length.

Currently the research focus of the group is the feasibility of hydrocarbon-fuelled scramjet engines for low flight Mach numbers of 6-8 with fuel injection in the inlet of the engine rather than directly into its combustor with the aim of shortening combustor length and hence the engine weight.

The group works in close collaboration with the Defence Research Development Centre Valcartier.

Research Highlights and Experimental Facilities

Recent Publications