Computational and experimental study on supersonic film cooling for liquid rocket nozzle applications

Abstract

An experimental and computational investigation of supersonic film cooling was conducted on a subscale model of a rocket engine nozzle. A computational model of a convergent-divergent nozzle was generated, incorporating a secondary injection module for film cooling in the divergent section. Computational fluid dynamics simulations were run on the model and different injection configurations were analyzed. The computational fluid dynamics simulations also analyzed the parameters that influence film cooling effectiveness. Subsequent to the computational fluid dynamics analysis and literature survey an angled injection configuration was found to be more effective, therefore the hardware was fabricated for the same. The fabricated nozzle was later fixed to an Air-Kerosene combustor and numerous sets of experiments were conducted in order to ascertain the effect on film cooling on the nozzle wall. The film coolant employed was gaseous nitrogen. The results showed substantial cooling along the walls and a considerable reduction in heat transfer from the combustion gas to the wall of the nozzle. Finally the computational model was validated using the experimental results. There was fairly good agreement between the predicted nozzle wall temperature and the value obtained through experiments.

High resolution simulation of film cooling with blowing ratio and inclination angle effects based on hybrid thermal lattice Boltzmann method

“…Acharya [3] made a comprehensive review on lots of numerical works of film cooling during recent twenty years. No matter experimental or numerical works, most of them are concerned about the effects of various aerodynamic and geometrical parameters, such as blowing ratio, inclination angle, the shape of film cooling hole and compound angle on cooling performance [4][5][6][7][8]. However, there seems few studies on the influencing mechanism of these parameters and the evolutionary mechanism of coherent structure, which are pivotal and theoretical problems for film-cooling investigation.…”