Presented by:
Nitesh Attal, Principal Engineer - Applications 
Convergent Science 

Angela Wu, Research Engineer 
Convergent Science

Rotating detonation engines (RDEs) offer a number of 
advantages over deflagrative combustion devices, including 
faster heat release, higher thermal efficiency, and greater 
thrust. These benefits have led to significant interest in 
using RDEs for propulsion in various types of aircraft and 
rockets. In an RDE, fuel and air are injected separately 
into an annular chamber. Once combustion is initiated, one 
or more continuous detonation waves propagate azimuthally 
around the chamber, providing a near-steady source of high-
frequency thrust without the need to initiate detonation 
repeatedly. In practice, RDEs exhibit losses such as 
parasitic combustion and contact burning, which affect the 
stability of the detonation waves and the thermal efficiency 
of the engine. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can offer 
insight into the combustion dynamics of RDEs and aid in 
design optimization to prevent these losses. In this 
webinar, we’ll discuss the tools CONVERGE CFD software 
offers to simulate RDEs, including autonomous meshing with 
Adaptive Mesh Refinement, a fully coupled detailed chemistry 
solver, high-fidelity RANS and LES turbulence models, and 
excellent parallel scaling. We'll demonstrate how to apply 
these features to model hydrogen-air, methane-oxygen, and 
ethylene-air RDEs.