Using poor-detonable liquid C8H16/air mixture with low-energy system (total spark energy of 50 mJ) and a new one-step detonation initiation method developed in this study, partial-tube fill experiments have been conducted in a fixed length PDE tube with a fuel/air mixture section of different length, covering a wide range of the detonation tube fill fraction (ratio of fuel/air mixture length to tube length). Impulse was calculated by integrating the pressure differential at the closed end of the tube. Based on the re- sults obtained experimentally, it is found that the fuel-based specific impulse declines when fill fraction increases. On the other hand, the total-mixture-based specific impulse rises as fill fraction increases. A multi-cycle partial-fill model is developed to predict the impulse obtained from a partially-filled detona- tion tube, which is valuable for the optimization of PDE performance.
