Efficiency of SparkJet

The thermal efficiency of a SparkJet is evaluated by measuring the impulse response of a pendulum subject to a single spark discharge. The SparkJet is attached to the end of a pendulum. A laser displacement sensor is used to measure the displacement of the pendulum upon discharge. The pendulum motion is a function of the fraction of the discharge energy that is channeled into the heating of the gas (i.e., increasing the translational-rotational temperature). A theoretical perfect gas model is used to estimate the portion of the energy from the heated gas that results in equivalent pendulum displacement as in the experiment. The earlier results from multiple runs for different capacitances of C = 3, 5, 10, 20, and 40(micro)F demonstrate that the thermal efficiency decreases with higher capacitive discharges.1 In the current paper, results from additional run cases have been included and confirm the previous results