Analysis of supercritical methane in rocket engine cooling channels

Analysis of supercritical methane in rocket engine cooling channels

Denies, L.
Zandbergen, B.T.C. (TU Delft Space Systems Egineering)
Natale, P. (Centro Italiano di Ricerche Aerospaziali)
Ricci, D. (Centro Italiano di Ricerche Aerospaziali)
Invigorito, M. (Centro Italiano di Ricerche Aerospaziali)

2016

Methane is a promising propellant for liquid rocket engines. As a regenerative coolant, it would be close to its critical point, complicating cooling analysis. This study encompasses the development and validation of a new, open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method for analysis of methane cooling channels. Validation with experimental data has been carried out, showing an accuracy within 20 K for wall temperature and 10% for pressure drop. It is shown that the turbulence model has only a limited impact on the simulation results and that the wall function approach generates valid results. Finally, a cooling analysis is performed to compare two thrust chamber materials. A traditional copper alloy is compared to aluminium as chamber material for a small moderate-pressure oxygen/ methane engine. The analyses show that aluminium is a feasible chamber material only if a thermal barrier coating is applied. In addition, a significantly higher cooling channel pressure drop is incurred for an aluminium chamber than for a copper chamber due to the lower allowable temperature.

supercritical methane
regenerative cooling
thrust chamber
cooling channels
CFD
CHT
copper
aluminium

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4a099ea8-d8c4-4ee0-9ed4-b8319f55dc73

Proceedings of the Space Propulsion 2016: Rome, Italy

Space propulsion, 2016-05-02 → 2016-05-06, Marriott Rome Park Hotel, Rome, Italy

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2016 L. Denies, B.T.C. Zandbergen, P. Natale, D. Ricci, M. Invigorito