This invention relates in general to ram jet rocket engines and in particular to a new and useful control valve for regulating the flow of precombustion gases between a precombustion chamber and a main combustion chamber.
In machine construction, control valves for metering the flow of fluids and hydraulically or pneumatically operated devices are known in a variety of designs. In general, such movable mechanical component parts are required to operate exactly, comply with the operating conditions, and be adequately shaped to minimize losses in flow. Further, these control members are to be as lightweight as possible, to reduce mass forces and permit high operating frequencies.
Ball controlled valves are also used in various machines. For example, German OS 28 16 806 shows in FIG. 5 a ball valve in an antiblocking device for vehicle brakes, in which the ball controlling the flow aperture is actuated by a push rod. The fluid flows through the valve, both in front of and behind the control aperture, in the axial direction.
With certain modes of operation, particular difficulties arise which call for specific properties of the employed valves, to overcome the problems. For example, in some thermal machines, such as ram jet rocket engines, operating with fuel-rich gases which are produced in a precombustion chamber from a solid chemical fuel and flow through one or more conduits into a main combustion chamber to which air oxygen is supplied for final stoichiometric combustion, solid particles are obtained in the hot gas stream. Being adhesive, these particles are extremely troublesome, they soil lines and, particularly, form deposits on the edges, in corners, recesses and cavities of the valves which may cause failures of these important elements.
The prior art valve construction of the above mentioned German OS 28 16 806 is still not capable of safely eliminating these damaging phenomena, since no particular measures are taken to actively prevent or fight deposits in the critical spaces, i.e. in the ball cavity and behind.