Chinese scientists say they have developed new type of rocket engine driven by explosive shock waves
- The continuous rotating detonation engine promises to be more efficient than conventional rocket engines and could help power hypersonic plans
- The technology was first proposed in the 1950s and a team from Tsinghua University is hopeful they have found a way to reduce the engine’s weight
A research team in Beijing says they have built a new type of rocket engine powered by explosions.
The continuous rotating detonation combustion engine, developed by Professor Wang Bing and colleagues from the school of aerospace engineering in Tsinghua University in Beijing, is driven by explosive shock waves spinning like a tornado faster than the speed of sound.
The idea of an engine powered by explosion was proposed by Soviet scientists as early as the 1950s to launch rockets into orbit.
This type of engine would be more efficient than a normal rocket engine and many prototypes have been built over the years, but most had a cylindrical combustion chamber that made the engine too heavy for real-life applications.
Wang’s team said that they had got around the problem by reducing the cylinder to a disk.
The new layout was previously considered too difficult to build because it required a complete redesign of nearly all components, but tests have proved the technology worked, Wang and his colleagues wrote in a conference paper published on cnki.net, China’s largest online research platform last month.