Numerical Study on Regenerative Cooling Characteristics of Kerosene Scramjets

Abstract

The use of kerosene-based regenerative cooling for scramjet has been found widespread attention due to its inherent nature of high energy utilization efficiency and good thermal protection performance. In order to provide a reference for the later design and experiments, three-dimensional turbulence simulations and sensitivity analysis were performed to determine the effects of three operating mode parameters, heat flux, mass flow rate, and outlet pressure, on the regenerative cooling characteristics of kerosene scramjets. A single rectangular-shaped channel for regenerative cooling was assumed. The RNG k-ε turbulence model and kerosene cracking mechanism with single-step global reaction were applied for the supercritical-pressure heat transfer of kerosene flows in the channel. Conclusions can be drawn that as the kerosene temperature rises along the channel, the decrease of fluid density and viscosity contributes to increasing the fluid velocity and heat transfer. When the kerosene temperature is close to the pseudocritical temperature, the pyrolysis reaction results into the rapid increase of fluid velocity. However, the heat transfer deterioration occurs as the specific heat and thermal conductivity experience their turning points. The higher heat flux leads to lower heat transfer coefficient, and the latter stops rising when the wall temperature reaches the pseudocritical temperature. The same rising trend of the heat transfer coefficient is observed under different outlet pressures, but the heat transfer deterioration occurs earlier at smaller outlet pressure for the reason that the corresponding pseudocritical temperature decreases. The heat transfer coefficient increases significantly along with the rise of the mass flow rate, which is mainly attributable to the increase of Reynolds number. Quantitative results indicate that as the main influence factors, the heat flux and mass flow rate are respectively negatively and positively relative to the intensification of heat transfer, but outlet pressure always has little effects on cooling performance.

Heat transfer and flow structures of supercritical n-decane in a regenerative cooling channel loaded with non-uniform heat flux

“…Many researchers pay attention to active thermal protection to provide higher efficiency thermal protection for propulsion systems, especially for a scramjet engine (Ding et al, 2019;Zuo et al, 2021). Using fuel as the coolant, regenerative cooling is a typical convective cooling method with quantities of cooling channels mounted inside the combustor wall (Jing et al, 2017;Zhao et al, 2018;Jin et al, 2020). The fuel flows through the cooling passages and absorbs excess heat from the combustion chamber inner walls before entering the combustor.…”