Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulations of a GO2/GH2 Single Element Combustor

Abstract

A single-element combustor known as the “Penn State preburner combustor” is modeled numerically using the commercial computational fluid dynamics code ANSYS CFX. The aim of computational fluid dynamics modeling is to simulate the wall heat flux, which has been measured experimentally. The simulated combustion chamber has a single shear coaxial injector and operates with gaseous oxygen and hydrogen in a staged combustion configuration. The turbulent flow in the combustion chamber is modeled using the Favre-averaged Navier–Stokes equations and the shear-stress transport turbulence model. The turbulent non-premixed flame is modeled using an extended eddy dissipation model. The developed turbulent combustion model shows good agreement with the experimental data, good convergence, and a short computational time. A mesh convergence study is performed, and a mesh-independent solution is obtained on a mesh with 1.5 million nodes. The complexity of the model is gradually increased until the model is capable of predicting the wall heat flux. The analysis of numerical results shows a significant effect of boundary conditions on wall heat flux predictions. The comparison of the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulations with the experimental data demonstrates the capability of Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulations to predict wall heat fluxes in a rocket combustion chamber.