Pulsejet

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 airow, 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 congurations 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.
Diagram of a pulsejet
Each petal covers a circular intake hole at its tip. The
daisy valve is bolted to the manifold through its centre.
A pulsejet engine (or pulse jet) is a type of jet engine Although easier to construct on a small scale, it is less
in which combustion occurs in pulses. Pulsejet engines eective than a valve grid.
can be made with few[1] or no moving parts,[2][3][4] and
while some versions may require a brief blast of air throgh
the intake to achieve ignition, all are capable of running
statically (ie as soon as ignition has been achieved, the engine will continue to ingest air on its own, no leafblowers
required).

1.2 Valveless pulsejets

Pulsejet engines are a lightweight form of jet propulsion,

but usually have a poor compression ratio, and hence give
a low specic impulse.
Main article: Valveless pulse jet
One notable line of research of pulsejet engines includes
the pulse detonation engine which involves repeated deto- Valveless pulsejet engines have no moving parts and use
nations in the engine, and which can potentially give high only their geometry to control the ow of exhaust out of
compression and good eciency.
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
ecient propulsion.

Types

The valveless pulsejet operates on the same principle as

the valved pulsejet, but the 'valve' is the engines 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
1.1 Valved pulsejets
engine designs, almost any design can be made to be selfstarting by providing the engine with fuel and an ignition
Valved pulsejet engines use a mechanical valve to con- spark, starting the engine with no compressed air. Once
trol the ow of expanding exhaust, forcing the hot gas running, the engine only requires input of fuel to maintain
to go out of the back of the engine through the tailpipe a self-sustaining combustion cycle.
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.

History

Russian inventor and artillery ocer N. Teleshov

patented a pulsejet engine in 1864 while Swedish inventor Martin Wiberg also has a claim to having invented the
rst pulsejet, in Sweden, but details are unclear.
The rst working pulsejet was patented in 1906 by Russian engineer V.V. Karavodin, who completed a working
model in 1907. The French inventor Georges Marconnet patented his valveless pulsejet engine in 1908, and
Ramon Casanova, in Ripoll, Spain patented a pulsejet
in Barcelona in 1917, having constructed one beginning
in 1913. Engineer Paul Schmidt, pioneered a more ecient design based on modication of the intake valves (or
aps), earning him government support from the German
Air Ministry in 1933.[5]

Ramon Casanova and the pulsejet engine he constructed and

patented in 1917

2.1

Argus As 109-014

HISTORY

co-invented the ribbon parachute, a device used to stabilise the V-1 in its terminal dive. Schmidts prototype
bomb failed to meet German Air Ministry specications,
especially owing to poor accuracy, range and high cost.
The original Schmidt design had the pulsejet placed in
a fuselage like a modern jet ghter, unlike the eventual
V-1 which had the engine placed above the warhead and
fuselage.
The Argus Company began work based on Schmidts
work. Other German manufacturers working on similar
pulsejets and ying bombs were The Askania Company,
Robert Lusser of Fieseler, Dr. Fritz Gosslau of Argus
and the Siemens company, which were all combined to
work on the V-1.[5]
With Schmidt now working for Argus, the pulsejet was
perfected and was ocially known by its RLM designation as the Argus As 109-014. The rst unpowered drop
occurred at Peenemnde on 28 October 1942 and the rst
powered ight on 10 December 1942.
The pulsejet was evaluated to be an excellent balance of
cost and function: a simple design that performed well for
minimal cost.[5] It would run on any grade of petroleum
and the ignition shutter system was not intended to last beyond the V-1s normal operational ight life of one hour.
Although the low static thrust-to-weight ratio of the V1
meant that it would require an unreasonably long runway
to take o on its own, the V-1s resonant jet engine could
operate and produce thrust while stationary. The question of how to quickly bring the V1 up to takeo speed
was answered with an airplane catapult which sent the ying bomb skyward at roughly 580km/h. The simple resonant design based on the ratio (8.7:1) of the diameter
to the length of the exhaust pipe functioned to perpetuate the combustion cycle, and attained stable resonance
frequency at 43 cycles per second. The engine produced
500 lbf (2,200 N) of static thrust and approximately 750
lbf (3,300 N) in ight.[5]
Ignition in the As 014 was provided by a single automotive spark plug, mounted approximately 75 cm (30 in)
behind the front-mounted valve array. The spark only
operated for the start sequence for the engine; the Argus
As 014, like all pulsejets, did not require ignition coils or
magnetos for ignition the ignition source being the tail
of the preceding reball during the run. Contrary to popular belief, the engine casing did not provide sucient
heat to cause Diesel-type ignition of the fuel, as there is
insignicant compression within a pulsejet engine.
The Argus As 014 valve array was based on a shutter system that operated at the 43 to 45 cycles-per-second frequency of the engine.

Three air nozzles in the front of the Argus As 014 were

connected to an external high pressure source to start the
engine. The fuel used for ignition was acetylene, with the
In 1934, Georg Madelung and Munich-based Paul technicians having to place a bae of wood or cardboard
Schmidt proposed to the German Air Ministry a y- in the exhaust pipe to stop the acetylene diusing before
ing bomb powered by Schmidts pulsejet. Madelung complete ignition. Once the engine ignited and minimum
Argus As 014 pulsejet engine of a V-1 ying bomb at the Royal
Air Force Museum London

3
operating temperature was attained, external hoses and tion is very poor. The pulsejet uses the Lenoir cycle
connectors were removed.
which, lacking an external compressive driver such as the
The V-1, being a cruise missile, lacked landing gear, in- Otto cycle's piston, or the Brayton cycle's compression
stead the Argus As 014 was launched on an inclined ramp turbine, drives compression with acoustic resonance in a
powered by a piston-driven steam catapult. Steam power tube. This limits the maximum pre-combustion pressure
to re the piston was generated by the violent exothermic ratio, to around 1.2 to 1.
chemical reaction created when hydrogen peroxide and The high noise levels usually make them impractical
potassium permanganate (termed T-Sto and Z-Sto) for other than military and other similarly restricted
are combined.
applications.[6] However, pulsejets are used on a large
The principal military use of the pulsejet engine, with scale as industrial drying systems, and there has been a
the volume production of the Argus As 014 unit (the resurgence in studying these engines for applications such
rst pulsejet engine ever in volume production), was for as high-output heating, biomass conversion, and alternause with the V-1 ying bomb. The engines characteris- tive energy systems, as pulsejets can run on almost anytic droning noise earned it the nicknames buzz bomb thing that burns, including particulate fuels such as sawor doodlebug. The V-1 was a German cruise missile dust or coal powder.
used in World War II, most famously in the bombing of
London in 1944. Pulsejet engines, being cheap and easy
to construct, were the obvious choice for the V-1s designers, given the Germans materials shortages and overstretched industry at that stage of the war. Designers of
modern cruise missiles do not choose pulsejet engines for
propulsion, preferring turbojets or rocket engines.
Wright Field technical personnel reverse-engineered the
V-1 from the remains of a V-1 that had failed to detonate in Britain. The result was the creation of the JB-2
Loon, with the airframe built by Republic Aviation, and
the Argus As 014 reproduction pulsejet powerplant made
by Ford Motor Company. General Henry Harley Hap
Arnold of the United States Army Air Forces was concerned that this weapon could be built of steel and wood,
in 2000 man hours and approximate cost of US$600 (in
1943).[5]

Operation

Pulsejets have been used to power experimental helicopters, the engines being attached to the ends of the rotor
blades. In providing power to helicopter rotors, pulsejets
have the advantage over turbine or piston engines of not
producing torque upon the fuselage since they don't apply force to the shaft, but push the tips. A helicopter may
then be built without a tail rotor and its associated transmission and drive shaft, simplifying the aircraft (cyclic
and collective control of the main rotor is still necessary). This concept was being considered as early as 1947
when the American Helicopter Company started work on
its XA-5 Top Sergeant helicopter prototype powered by
pulsejet engines at the rotor tips.[7] The XA-5 rst ew in
January 1949 and was followed by the XA-6 Buck Private
with the same pulsejet design. Also in 1949 Hiller Helicopters built and tested the Hiller Powerblade, the worlds
rst hot-cycle pressure-jet rotor. Hiller switched to tip
mounted ramjets but American Helicopter went on to develop the XA-8 under a U.S. Army contract. It rst ew
in 1952 and was known as the XH-26 Jet Jeep. It used
XPJ49 pulsejets mounted at the rotor tips. The XH-26
met all its main design objectives but the Army cancelled
the project because of the unacceptable level of noise of
the pulsejets and the fact that the drag of the pulsejets at
the rotor tips made autorotation landings very problematic. Rotor-tip propulsion has been claimed to reduce the
cost of production of rotary-wing craft to 1/10 of that
for conventional powered rotary-wing aircraft.[6] Pulsejets have also been used in both control-line and radiocontrolled model aircraft. The speed record for controlline model aircraft is greater than 200 miles per hour (323
km/h).
A free-ying radio-controlled pulsejet is limited by the
engines intake design. At around 450 km/h (280 mph)
most valved engines valve systems stop fully closing owing to ram air pressure, which results in performance loss.

Variable intake geometry lets the engine produce full

power at most speeds by optimizing for whatever speed
the air is entering pulsejet at. Valveless designs are not as
Pulsejet engines are characterized by simplicity, low cost negatively aected by ram air pressure as other designs,
of construction, and high noise levels. While the thrust- as they were never intended to stop the ow out of the
to-weight ratio is excellent, thrust specic fuel consumpAnimation of a pulsejet engine

FUNCTION

intake, and can signicantly increase in power at speed.

preceding column of gasthis resulting ash slams the

Another feature of pulsejetjet engines is that their thrust reed-valves shut or in the case of valveless designs, stops
can be increased by a specially shaped duct placed be- the ow of fuel until a vacuum is formed and the cycle
hind the engine. The duct acts as an annular wing, which repeats.
evens out the pulsating thrust, by harnessing aerodynamic
forces in the pulsejet exhaust. The duct, typically called 4.1 Valved design
an augmenter, can signicantly increase the thrust of a
pulsejet with no additional fuel consumption. Gains of There are two basic types of pulsejets. The rst is known
100% increases in thrust are possible, resulting in a much as a valved or traditional pulsejet and it has a set of onehigher fuel eciency. However, the larger the augmenter way valves through which the incoming air passes. When
duct, the more drag it produces, and it is only be eective the air-fuel is ignited, these valves slam shut which means
within specic speed ranges.
that the hot gases can only leave through the engines
tailpipe, thus creating forward thrust.

The cycle frequency is primarily dependent on the length

of the engine. For a small model-type engine the frequency may be around 250 pulses per second, whereas
for a larger engine such as the one used on the German
V-1 ying bomb, the frequency was closer to 45 pulses
per second. The low-frequency sound produced resulted
in the missiles being nicknamed buzz bombs.

Function
2

4.2 Valveless design

3

Pulsejet schematic. First part of the cycle: air ows 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.

Main article: Valveless pulse jet

The second type of pulsejet is known as the valveless
pulsejet.[8] Technically the term for this engine is the
acoustic-type pulsejet, or aerodynamically valved pulsejet.

The combustion cycle comprises ve or six phases depending on the engine: Induction, Compression, (op- Valveless pulsejets come in a number of shapes and sizes,
tional) Fuel Injection, Ignition, Combustion, and Ex- with dierent designs being suited for dierent functions.
A typical valveless engine will have one or more intake
haust.
tubes, a combustion chamber section, and one or more
Starting with ignition within the combustion chamber, a exhaust tube sections.
high pressure is raised by the combustion of the fuel-air
mixture. The pressurized gas from combustion cannot The intake tube takes in air and mixes it with fuel to comexit forward through the one-way intake valve and so exits bust, and also controls the expulsion of exhaust gas, like
a valve, limiting the ow but not stopping it altogether.
only to the rear through the exhaust tube.
While the fuel-air mixture burns, most of the expanding
The inertial reaction of this gas ow causes the engine to gas is forced out of the exhaust pipe of the engine. Beprovide thrust, this force being used to propel an airframe cause the intake tube(s) also expel gas during the exhaust
or a rotor blade. The inertia of the traveling exhaust gas cycle of the engine, most valveless engines have the incauses a low pressure in the combustion chamber. This takes facing backwards so that the thrust created adds to
pressure is less than the inlet pressure (upstream of the the overall thrust, rather than reducing it.
one-way valve), and so the induction phase of the cycle
The combustion creates two pressure wave fronts, one
begins.
traveling down the longer exhaust tube and one down the
In the simplest of pulsejet engines this intake is through a short intake tube. By properly 'tuning' the system (by
venturi which causes fuel to be drawn from a fuel supply. designing the engine dimensions properly), a resonating
In more complex engines the fuel may be injected directly combustion process can be achieved.
into the combustion chamber. When the induction phase
is under way, fuel in atomized form is injected into the While some valveless engines are known for being excombustion chamber to ll the vacuum formed by the de- tremely fuel-hungry, other designs use signicantly less
parting of the previous reball; the atomized fuel tries to fuel than a valved pulsejet, and a properly designed sysll up the entire tube including the tailpipe. This causes tem with advanced components and techniques can rival
atomized fuel at the rear of the combustion chamber to or exceed the fuel eciency of small turbojet engines.
ash as it comes in contact with the hot gases of the In 1909, Georges Marconnet developed the rst pulsat-

5
ing combustor without valves. It was the grandfather of
all valveless pulsejets. The valveless pulsejet was experimented with by the French propulsion research group
SNECMA (Socit Nationale d'tude et de Construction
de Moteurs d'Aviation ), in the late 1940s.
The valveless pulsejets rst widespread use was the Dutch
drone Aviolanda AT-21[9] A properly designed valveless
engine will excel in ight; as it does not have valves, ram
air pressure from traveling at high speed does not cause
the engine to stop running like a valved engine. They can
achieve higher top speeds, with some advanced designs
being capable of operating at Mach .7 or possibly higher.
The advantage of the acoustic-type pulsejet is simplicity.
Since there are no moving parts to wear out, they are easier to maintain and simpler to construct.

4.3

Future uses

trieved 2014-03-03.
[2]
[3] Patent US6216446 - Valveless pulse-jet engine with forward facing intake duct - Google Patents. Google.com.
Retrieved 2014-03-03.
[4] Valveless Pulsjet. Home.no. Retrieved 2014-03-03.
[5] George Mindling, Robert Bolton: US Airforce Tactical
Missiles:1949-1969: The Pioneers, Lulu.com, 200: ISBN
0-557-00029-7. pp6-31
[6] Jan Roskam, Chuan-Tau Edward Lan; Airplane aerodynamics and performance DARcorporation: 1997: ISBN
1-884885-44-6: 711 pages
[7] Excerpt of Flight May 12, 1949 (PDF). ightglobal.com. Retrieved 2014-08-31.
[8] Geng, T.; Schoen, M. A.; Kuznetsov, A. V.; Roberts,
W. L. (2007). Combined Numerical and Experimental Investigation of a 15-cm Valveless Pulsejet.
Flow, Turbulence and Combustion 78 (1): 1733.
doi:10.1007/s10494-006-9032-8.

Pulsejets are used today in target drone aircraft, ying

control line model aircraft (as well as radio-controlled
aircraft), fog generators, and industrial drying and home
heating equipment. Because pulsejets are an ecient
and simple way to convert fuel into heat, experimenters [9]
are using them for new industrial applications such as
biomass fuel conversion, boiler and heater systems, and
other applications.
[10]
Some experimenters continue to work on improved designs. The engines are dicult 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 eciency 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.[10]

See also
Valveless pulse jet

7 References
Aeronautical Engineering Review, Institute of the
Aeronautical Sciences (U.S.): 1948, vol. 7.
George Mindling, Robert Bolton: US Airforce Tactical Missiles:1949-1969: The Pioneers, Lulu.com,
200: ISBN 0-557-00029-7. pp631

8 External links
- An international site dedicated to pulsejets, including design and experimentation. Includes an extremely active forum composed of knowledgeable
enthusiasts

Video of 21st century-built German reproduction

Argus As 014 pulsejet testing

List of aircraft engines

Notes

[1] Pulse Detonation Engine.

Diaz, Jesus (2011-07-28). Boeings Millennium Falcon

Floats Using Nazi Technology. Wired.com.

- A site for hobby jet propulsion, specically valved

and valveless pulsejet engines. They oer many free
pulsejet plans, and have a lot of useful information

Pulse detonation engine

Jan Roskam, Chuan-Tau Edward Lan; Airplane aerodynamics and performance, DARcorporation: 1997 ISBN
1-884885-44-6: 711 pages

Gofurther.utsi.edu.

Re-

- A detailed guide documenting all the steps required

to build ones own Pulsejet. The example created on
this site is eventually mounted onto a home-built kart
and tested

8
Pulsejets in aeromodels
Popular Rotocraft Association
Pulsejet Bike
Apocalyptic robotics performance group Survival
Research Labs operates a collection of pulsejet engines in some of their creations, including the Hovercraft, V1, and the Flame Hurricane.
PETA (Pulse-Ejector-Thrust-Augmentors) article
Ramon Casanovas pulsejet
American Helicopter XA-5 Flight

EXTERNAL LINKS

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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