Simulation of the processes of spraying and combustion of kerosene and liquid oxygen in the chamber of a liquid-propellant rocket engine

Abstract

The paper presents the results of simulation of spray and combustion processes in the liquid-propellant rocket engine chamber using the z77 reduced kinetic mechanism of chemical reactions and a hybrid method for determining spray parameters of a swirl atomizer. Simulation was carried out for the nominal operational conditions in a three-dimensional domain using the ANSYS Fluent software. The process of spraing liquid fuel components (T-1 kerosene and oxygen) by monopropellant injectors was simulated using a model of discontinuous phases. The simulation results (pressure, temperature and velocity) were compared with the data of analytical thermogasdynamic calculation results and experimental results for pressure in chamber and gas temperature near the wall. The difference between the simulation results and the experimental results does not exceed 8%. Thus, it was shown that it is possible to use the mechanism z77 and hybrid method for determining spray parameters of a swirl atomizer presented in this paper to obtain accurate simulation results of the kerosene T-1 and oxygen spray and combustion processes of the investigated liquid-propellant rocket engine.

Keywords

• liquid rocket engine
• combustion
• injector
• spray
• kerosene
• oxygen
• combustion products
• combustion processes