Coupled heat transfer analysis of thrust chambers with recessed shear coaxial injectors

Abstract

To investigate the effects of recessed lengths on combustion performance and heat loads in LOX/methane thrust chambers with shear coaxial injectors, a coupled numerical methodology is developed to solve the combustion and heat transfer in thrust chambers with regenerative cooling. In this methodology, the transcritical turbulent combustion is modeled by a validated non-adiabatic flamelet model considering real-fluid properties; turbulent flows within the thrust chamber and cooling channels are computed by a pressure-based coupled algorithm. The validation indicates that the prediction with detailed chemistry mechanism and the Chung method confirms quantitatively to literature experimental data. The results reveal that the recess causes an increase of wall heat flux in the whole thrust chamber and makes the heat flux peak in the combustion chamber moves downstream. Furthermore, both the heat flux peaks in the combustion chamber and nozzle increase first and then decrease as recessed lengths increase. Meanwhile, chamber pressure, hot-gas temperature, and the averaging heat flux of the combustion chamber wall are positively correlated with recessed lengths. However, the heat loads are more sensitive to the recessed lengths than chamber pressure and hot-gas temperature. Much attention should be paid to the protection of chamber wall.