The influences of flow conditions on heat transfer of supercritical cracked-kerosene

Abstract

The main component of propulsion system for hypersonic vehicle, such as scramjet, always sustains extremely high thermal loads, and actively regenerative cooling must be considered using its own hydrocarbon fuel as coolant. Due to the limited amount of coolant and the complex physical and chemical problems involved in heat transfer process, the difficulty of cooling channel design increases. In order to explore the ways to improve cooling efficiency, the influences of inlet velocity and flow direction on heat transfer of supercritical cracked-kerosene were investigated via a solid-fluid conjugated simulation method. The results indicate that increasing the coolant velocity can enhance cooling effect with a constant mass flow rate, and the wall temperature at peak heat flux decreased obviously. However, as the wall thickness increases, the enhanced cooling effect is gradually cancelled out. Flow direction has significant influence on heat transfer process. Compared with forward flow, the reverse flow shows considerable uniform wall temperature and low fuel temperature effect. These conclusions can be used as an important reference for cooling channel design under supercritical conditions.