Effective Modeling of Conjugate Heat Transfer and Hydraulics for the Regenerative Cooling Design of Kerosene Rocket Engines

Abstract

The present work is motivated to develop a unified framework to simulate multi-physical processes which are crucial for trade-off design of liquid rocket thrust chambers among propulsive performance, regenerative cooling, and pressure budget. In this paper, an effective modeling of conjugate heat transfer and hydraulics through the regenerative cooling passage has been performed to quantitatively evaluate detailed cooling designs, including spirally twisted channels and bidirectionally branched circuit, as well as to provide the wall heat flux to a compressible reacting flow solver in an interactively coupled manner. The kerosene fuel used as coolant is modeled by a three-component physical surrogate, and the fluid properties required for calculation of a Nusselt number correlation and empirical resistance coefficients are computed over the entire thermodynamic states from compressed liquid to supercritical fluid using the NIST SUPERTRAPP. The present method has been applied to an actual regeneratively cooled thrust chamber and validated against measurement of hot-firing tests in terms of temperature increase and pressure drop of the coolant through the cooling passages. Based on the numerical results, supplementary effects of peripheral fuel cooling injection and thermal barrier coating are addressed.

Regenerative Cooling Comparison of LOX/LCH4 and LOX/LC3H8 Rocket Engines Using the One-Dimensional Regenerative Cooling Modelling Tool ODREC

“…They focused on LOX/kerosene engines with this methodology. Kim et al [12] adopted a 1-D modelling approximation for the coolant side, and the model was coupled with the turbulent reacting flow solver for the hot gas side. They analyzed different channel configurations of engines with kerosene, and reported good agreement with experimental coolant pressure and temperature measurements.…”

Computational Investigation of Impingement Cooling for Regeneratively Cooled Rocket Nozzles

“…When pure hydrogen is used, maximum film cooling effects are observed compared to a mixture. They found for each case the film cooling effectiveness reduces the wall heat flux and the associated heat transfer coefficient Kim et al (2014). carried out a CHT and hydraulics study of a regenerative cooling designed rocket engine with kerosene.…”