Numerical simulation of transpiration cooling through porous material

Abstract

SUMMARYTranspiration cooling using ceramic matrix composite materials is an innovative concept for cooling rocket thrust chambers. The coolant (air) is driven through the porous material by a pressure difference between the coolant reservoir and the turbulent hot gas flow. The effectiveness of such cooling strategies relies on a proper choice of the involved process parameters such as injection pressure, blowing ratios, and material structure parameters, to name only a few. In view of the limited experimental access to the subtle processes occurring at the interface between hot gas flow and porous medium, reliable and accurate simulations become an increasingly important design tool. In order to facilitate such numerical simulations for a carbon/carbon material mounted in the side wall of a hot gas channel that are able to capture a spatially varying interplay between the hot gas flow and the coolant at the interface, we formulate a model for the porous medium flow of Darcy–Forchheimer type. A finite‐element solver for the corresponding porous medium flow is presented and coupled with a finite‐volume solver for the compressible Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes equations. The two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional results at Mach numberMa= 0.5 and hot gas temperatureTHG=540 K for different blowing ratios are compared with experimental data. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.