Combustion and Heat Transfer Modeling in Regeneratively Cooled Thrust Chambers (Wall Heat Flux Validation)

Abstract

The physical phenomena in the liquid rocket combustion chamber are very complicated such as turbulence, reaction, and real-gas effect. The prediction of heat flux on liquid rocket chamber wall is a challenging problem due to these complex physics This work is aimed particularly at the heat flux validation for the turbulent boundary layer in three physical situations; turbulent boundary layer on heated flat plate, turbulent boundary layer with pressure gradient, and recirculation zone of heated expansion tube. Each physical situation corresponds to the straight part of the combustion chamber, the rocket nozzle, and the exit of injectors. For the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes simulations, an adequate turbulent model should be selected to suit the flow feature. In this paper, three turbulent models have been tested for the above three validation problems. There is no perfect turbulent model for the prediction among the three turbulent models for all validation cases. The two-layer turbulent model works reasonably well for GH2/GO2 single injector conducted at Penn State University among the three turbulent models. Furthermore, turbulent models affect on not only the heat flux but also the turbulent intensity in the contraction tube of the GO2 injector and the flame shape.