Consideration of real gas effects and condensation in a spray-combustion rocket-thrust-chamber design tool

Astrium GmbH, Space Transportation München D-81663, Germany

Abstract

For the prediction of hot gas side heat transfer in rocket thrust chambers, Astrium Space Transportation (ST) uses the second generation multiphase Navier-Stokes solver Rocflam-II. To account for real-gas and condensation effects, pressure-dependent and even multiphase fluid data are included in the chemistry tables used by the code. Thus, the changing fluid properties near the two-phase region as well as transformation from gaseous to liquid and even solid state are reflected properly. Heat flux measurements for a dedicated subscale test campaign with strongly cooled walls show a clearly increasing heat load as soon as the combustion gases condense at the wall, due to the released latent heat of condensation. Corresponding coupled Rocflam-II/CFX simulations show a good quantitative agreement in heat flux for load cases with and without condensation, showing the ability of the code to correctly simulate flows in the real-gas and even inside the two-phase region.