Coupled radiation and turbulent multiphase flow in an aluminised solid propellant rocket engine

Abstract

We present in this paper numerical simulations of coupled radiative transfer and turbulent flows at high temperature and pressure, typical of multiphase flows encountered in aluminised solid propellant rocket engines. The radiating medium is constituted of gases and of liquid or solid particles of oxidised aluminum. The turbulent flow of the gaseous phase is treated by using a four equation, low Reynolds number, boundary-layer-type turbulence model. The distributions of concentrations, temperatures, and temperature fluctuation variances of particles are calculated from a Lagrangian approach and a turbulence dispersion model. Thermal and mechanical non-equilibrium between the gas and different classes of particles is allowed. A locally one dimensional, iteratively based, radiative transfer solver is developed to compute wall fluxes and radiative source terms. It is shown that the thermal boundary layer attenuates significantly the radiative fluxes coming from the outer regions. Particle radiation is found to be much more important than gas radiation. Turbulent dispersion of particles in the boundary layer induces a decrease of particle concentration in the region of maximum turbulent kinetic energy, and then, decreases the attenuation effect of wall fluxes due to the boundary layer. The effects of turbulent temperature fluctuations are found to be small in the problem under consideration.