Orifice Flow Dynamics in a Rocket Injector as an Excitation Source of Injector-Driven Combustion Instabilities

Abstract

To investigate a hypothesis of the orifice flow-induced instability in rocket engine thrust chambers, a single liquid oxygen (LOX) injector with an optically accessible orifice module was used for experiments, with water as a simulant for LOX. The unsteady pressure downstream of the orifice was measured using high-speed piezoelectric sensors under cavitating and non-cavitating intra-injector flow conditions. The cavitating orifice flows were directly visualized via backlight imaging with a high-speed camera through the optically accessible orifice module. Cavitation initiated at the cavitation number of 2.05, and the downstream bubble cloud formation started below 1.91. The unsteady pressure spectrum arising from cavitation comprises multiple peaks over a broad frequency range, which can cause low- and high-frequency instabilities. The dominant frequencies from cavitation decrease with increasing pressure drop, while the frequencies during non-cavitating flow increase. The non-cavitating orifice flow excites the second longitudinal acoustic mode of the injector tube. The acoustic mode excited by the non-cavitating flow becomes stronger when the pressure peak in the range of whistling phenomenon is close to the first longitudinal acoustic mode. In conclusion, the excitation mechanisms of the orifice-induced instability for the cavitating and non-cavitating flows were well identified, despite the limitations of water as a simulant for LOX.

Keywords

• combustion instability
• rocket injector
• flow visualization
• cavitation
• whistling