About

A pulsejet engine (or pulse jet) is a type of jet engine in which combustion occurs in pulses. A Pulse
Jet Engine is a fascinatingly simple type of jet engine that can be made with few or no moving parts.
They can run on almost anything flammable, under a wide range of conditions, and have a very large
throttle range. They can run while standing completely still, or flying through the air at great speed.
The reason they are called pulse jets, is due to how they produce intermittent pulses of thrust. The
engine takes in and mixes fuel with air, this mixture then burns creating a rapid increase in pressure.
This pressure causes the combusting exhaust gases to shoot out of the engine at high speed,
producing a momentary pulse of thrust.

Due to the design and shape of the engine, and the momentum of the exhaust gas leaving the engine
at great speed, the internal pressure of the engine falls below atmospheric pressure after the thrust
pulse. This low pressure causes more fuel and air to flow into the engine where it is then lit by
remaining hot gas, causing the cycle to once again repeat.

Pulsejet engines are a lightweight form of jet propulsion, but

usually have a poor compression ratio, and hence give a
low specific impulse.

This cycle of taking in fuel and air, burning it, expelling

exhaust, and taking in a new fuel air charge repeats up to
hundreds of times a second for small engines! The pulses of
thrust average out into a fairly steady usable force, which can
propel model airplanes, boats, go-karts, and a wide range of
industrial applications.

One notable line of research of pulsejet engines includes

the pulse detonation engine which involves repeated
detonations in the engine, and which can potentially give high
compression and good efficiency.
Figure 1: Diagram of a pulsejet

Types
There are two main types of pulsejet engines, both of which use resonant combustion and harness
the expanding combustion products to form a pulsating exhaust jet which produces thrust
intermittently.

1. Valved pulsejets
Valved pulsejet engines use a mechanical valve that opens and closes in order to control the flow of
expanding exhaust, forcing the hot gas to go out of the back of the engine through the tailpipe only, and
allow fresh air and more fuel to enter through the intake.
The valved pulsejet comprises an intake with a one-way valve arrangement. The valves prevent the
explosive gas of the ignited fuel mixture in the combustion chamber from exiting and disrupting the intake
airflow, although with all practical valved pulsejets there is some 'blowback' while running statically and
at low speed, as the valves cannot close fast enough to stop all the gas from exiting the intake. The
superheated exhaust gases exit through an acoustically resonant exhaust pipe.

The intake valve is typically a reed valve. The two most common configurations are the daisy valve, and
the rectangular valve grid. A daisy valve consists of a thin sheet of material to act as the reed, cut into the
shape of a stylized daisy with "petals" that widen towards their ends. Each "petal" covers a circular intake
hole at its tip. The daisy valve is bolted to the manifold through its centre. Although easier to construct on
a small scale, it is less effective than a valve grid.

Valved Pulse Jet Benefits:

High power to weight ratio

Lower complexity for integrating into RC vehicles (no fuel pump system needed)

Valved Pulse Jet Drawbacks:

temperamental to start

valves wear out, sometimes in seconds

more difficult to build

2. Valveless pulsejets
Valveless pulsejet engines have no moving parts and use only their geometry(shape) to control the flow
of exhaust out of the engine. Valveless pulsejets expel exhaust out of both the intakes and the exhaust,
though most try to have the majority of exhaust go out of the longer tail pipe for more efficient propulsion.

The valveless pulsejet operates on the same principle as the valved pulsejet, but the 'valve' is the engine's
geometry. Fuel, as a gas or atomized liquid spray, is either mixed with the air in the intake or directly
injected into the combustion chamber. Starting the engine usually requires forced air and an ignition
source, such as a spark plug, for the fuel-air mix. With modern manufactured engine designs, almost any
design can be made to be self-starting by providing the engine with fuel and an ignition spark, starting the
engine with no compressed air. Once running, the engine only requires input of fuel to maintain a self-
sustaining combustion cycle.
Valveless Pulse Jet Benefits:

Easy to start

No moving parts, virtually no maintenance an unlimited run time

Can run on almost anything that burns including waste material

Extremely large throttle range

Easy to design one that runs period

Valveless Pulse Jet Drawbacks:

Difficult to design one with really good performance

Harder to integrate into RC vehicles

Working Principle

Pulsejet engines are characterized by simplicity, low cost of construction, and high noise levels. While
the thrust-to-weight ratio is excellent, thrust specific fuel consumption is very poor. The pulsejet uses
the Lenoir cycle which, lacking an external compressive driver such as the Otto cycle's piston, or
the Brayton cycle's compression turbine, drives compression with acoustic resonance in a tube. This limits
the maximum pre-combustion pressure ratio, to around 1.2 to 1.

The picture below shows one of the many possible layouts of a valveless pulsejet engine. It has a chamber
with two tubular ports of unequal length and diameter. The port on the right, curved backwards, is the
intake pipe. The bigger, flared one on the left is the exhaust, or tailpipe. In some other engines, it is the
exhaust pipe that is bent into the U-shape, but the important thing is that the ends of both ports point in
the same direction.

Figure 2: Schematic Diagram of a valveless pulsejet engine

When the fuel-air mixture combusts in the chamber, the process generates a great amount of hot gas
very quickly. This happens so fast that it resembles an explosion. The immediate, explosive rise in internal
pressure first compresses the gas inside and then pushes it forcefully out of the chamber.

Two powerful spurts of hot expanding gas are created a big one that blows through the tailpipe and a
smaller one blowing through the intake. Leaving the engine, the two jets exert a pulse of thrust they
push the engine in the opposite direction.

As the gas expands and the combustion chamber empties, the pressure inside the engine drops. Due to
inertia of the moving gas, this drop continues for some time even after the pressure falls back to
atmospheric. The expansion stops only when the momentum of the gas pulse is completely spent. At that
point, there is a partial vacuum inside the engine.

The process now reverses itself. The outside (atmospheric) pressure is now higher than the pressure
inside the engine and fresh air starts rushing into the ends of the two ports. At the intake side, it quickly
passes through the short tube, enters the chamber and mixes with fuel. The tailpipe, however, is rather
longer, so that the incoming air does not even get as far as the chamber before the engine is refilled and
the pressure peaks.

One of the prime reasons for the extra length of the tailpipe is to retain enough of the hot exhaust gas
within the engine at the moment the suction starts. This gas is greatly rarified by the expansion, but the
outside pressure will push it back and increase its density again. Back in the chamber, this remnant of
previous combustion mixes vigorously with the fresh fuel/air mixture that enters from the other side. The
heat of the chamber and the free radicals in the retained gas will cause ignition and the process will repeat
itself.

The spark plug shown on the picture is needed only at start-up. Once the engine fires, the retained hot
gas provides self-ignition and the spark plug becomes unnecessary. Indeed, if spark ignition is left on, it
can interfere with the normal functioning of the engine.

Figure 3: Pulsejet schematic. First part of the

cycle: air flows through the intake (1), and is
mixed with fuel (2). Second part: the valve
(3) is closed and the ignited fuel-air mix (4)
propels the craft.

Unique Properties
The mechanical simplicity makes them very well suited for a number of applications, with virtually no
maintenance costs. Since pulse jets cost many times less than factory made turbojets, and are much easier
to make than building a jet out of a turbocharger, they are increasing in popularity as a low cost way to
get into hobby jet propulsion. They have been used to propel everything from go-carts to bikes to boats,
not to mention RC planes.

They are not only mechanically very simple, but they also have an extremely large throttle range, high
thermal energy release, and naturally low harmful emissions. Pulse jets are one of the most efficient ways
of converting fuel into heat, with some of the lowest releases of harmful emissions of any type of engine
or combustion device.

They can be designed and optimized for propulsion, thermal output, and a wide number of other
applications such as acoustic output or thermal insecticide foggers. Pulse jets can also be made to run on
fuels and material that most people dont even consider fuel. They can run on everything from coal dust,
saw dust powder, used cooking oil, to more traditional fuels like gasoline or diesel. As we like to say, if it
burns, you can probably run a pulse jet on it.

Just because pulse jets glow orange hot does not mean they are extremely inefficient. Pulse jets have no
internal moving parts, and their core gas temperature is not limited by the melting point of high RPM
turbine blades. Metals like stainless and Inconel are very good at holding in heat, and while they may glow
orange hot, only a small part of the heat is radiated away.

Turbines can only burn a fraction of the air they are able to take in and compress, if they tried to burn all
the air in the combustion chamber, the turbine blades would melt no matter how much coolant was
pumped through them. This is why military fighter jet engines have afterburner systems, the afterburner
injects additional fuel into a duct that is past the temperature sensitive turbine blades, using up the oxygen
left over in the exhaust. An afterburner system is not as efficient as combustion in the engines combustion
chamber section, and results in extremely high fuel consumption.

Usage

Pulse jet engines were invented in the early 1900s, and were cutting edge science until after WWII.
Pulsejets got abandoned, many feel long before they even reached their prime. They went from being the
main source of power for tens of thousands of cruise missiles, to nothing more than something that a
skilled hobbyist could build in their garage and used to power planes in Jet Speed contests. Pulsejets have
underwent a recent surge in popularity due to many unique properties, and their similarity to Pulse
Detonation Engines, making them the perfect test platform for many supporting technologies and devices.

Future uses
Pulsejets are used today in target drone aircraft, flying control line model aircraft (as well as radio-
controlled aircraft), fog generators, and industrial drying and home heating equipment. Because pulsejets
are an efficient and simple way to convert fuel into heat, experimenters are using them for new industrial
applications such as biomass fuel conversion, boiler and heater systems, and other applications.

Some experimenters continue to work on improved designs. The engines are difficult to integrate into
commercial manned aircraft designs because of noise and vibration, though they excel on the smaller-
scale unmanned vehicles.
The pulse detonation engine (PDE) marks a new approach towards non-continuous jet engines and
promises higher fuel efficiency compared to turbofan jet engines, at least at very high speeds. Pratt &
Whitney and General Electric now have active PDE research programs. Most PDE research programs use
pulsejet engines for testing ideas early in the design phase.

Boeing has a proprietary pulsejet engine technology called Pulse Ejector Thrust Augmentor (PETA), which
proposes to use pulsejet engines for vertical lift in military and commercial VTOL aircraft.