Abstract

Efficient particle combustion is crucial for improving the overall performance of solid rocket ramjets. However, particle combustion is jointly constrained by multiple environmental factors, such as oxidizer supply, gas–solid transport, and residence characteristics, which are difficult to characterize using conventional mixing-ratio-based evaluations fully. To provide a diagnostic evaluation of particle combustion potential under complex flow-field organization during design and optimization, a thermal-environment-informed particle combustion index ITPCI is proposed in this study. The index incorporates oxidizer availability, particle–oxidizer transport, residence-related effects, gas thermal environment, and particle thermal reactivity, and is intended to indicate regions where particle oxidizer-consumption capability can be retained under favorable thermochemical conditions. The reacting duct case shows that ITPCI provides a combustion-potential-oriented description of particle consumption. In the canonical jet-interaction flow, the conventional mixing degree mainly identifies shear-layer-dominated transport boundaries, while ITPCI emphasizes the regions with particle-consumption potential. Application to the afterburner further shows that particle combustion potential is governed by the match among oxidizer supply, particle transport, residence condition, and thermal environment. The head region has favorable thermal and residence conditions but remains oxygen-lean, whereas the downstream regions receive additional oxidizer but are constrained by nonuniform oxygen–particle distributions, thermal environment, and residence time. In the pulsed-jet cases, the variation of ITPCI provides a diagnostic interpretation of changes in particle source-term distribution. For the present configuration, upstream pulsed actuation mainly enhances the head-region response, and the selected case increases the full-domain gaseous-product source term associated with boron combustion by 2.96%. These results indicate that the proposed index can support combustion-potential diagnosis and flow-control assessment in solid rocket ramjet afterburners.

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