Analysis of combustion instability via constant volume combustion in a LOX/RP-1 bipropellant liquid rocket engine

Abstract

Turbulent two-phase reacting flow in the chamber of LOX/RP-1 bipropellant liquid rocket engine is numerically investigated in this paper. The predicted pressure and mean axial velocity are qualitatively consistent with the experimental measurements. The self-excited pressure oscillations are obtained without any disturbance introduced through the initial and boundary conditions. It is found that amount of abrupt pressure peaks appear frequently and stochastically in the head regions of the chamber, which are the important sources to drive and strengthen combustion instability. Such abrupt pressures are induced by local constant volume combustion, because local combustible gas mixtures with high temperature are formed and burnt out suddenly due to some fuel droplets reaching their critical state in a rich oxygen surrounding. A third Damkohler number is defined as the ratio of the characteristic time of a chemical reaction to the characteristic time of a pressure wave expansion to measure the relative intensity of acoustic propagation and combustion process in thrusters. The analysis of the third Damkohler number distributions in the whole thrust chamber shows that local constant volume combustion happens in the head regions, while constant pressure combustion presents in the downstream regions. It is found that the combustion instability occurs in the head regions within about 30 mm from the thruster head.