A Numerical Approach to Optimize the Design of a Pintle Injector for LOX/GCH4 Liquid-Propellant Rocket Engine

Abstract

This study presents an optimal design approach of a pintle injector for a deep throttlable liquid-propellant rocket engine (LPRE). Even though the pintle injector is used in rocket engines, it has become more important since reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) recently became a trend due to their economic and environmental benefits. However, since many variables must be determined to design a pintle injector, optimizing the pintle injector design is complicated. For this, we design a pintle injector to optimize the performance parameters; the spray angle, vaporization distance, and Sauter mean diameter (SMD). To confirm the approach, we design a pintle injector using an optimization method based on convex quadratic programming (CQP) for a 1000 N thrust and a throttle ability of 5 to 1 LPRE with liquid oxygen and gaseous methane. Then, we verify the performance using a numerical simulation. Through this work, we check the effectiveness of the optimization method for a pintle injector design.

Keywords

• optimal pintle injector design
• optimization
• convex quadratic programming
• liquid-propellant rocket engine
• numerical approach