Numerical study for the flame deflector design of four-engine liquid rockets

Abstract

The thermal environment of four-engine liquid rocket exhaust plume impinging on the flame deflector with different impingement and uplift angles is analysed. The supersonic exhaust gas impinging model was established by using the compressible, multi-component, Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with the finite volume method. A comparison between the numerical results and experimental data in the literature is made, which verified the validity and accuracy of the numerical model. Additionally, the flow fields of the four-engine rocket impinging on the flame deflector under different impingement and uplift angles are simulated. The results show that high temperatures on the deflector surface mainly occur on the impingement point or the cambered surface. A large impingement angle causes the reverse flow intensity to increase whilst a small angle causes the exhaust gas to deflect a little, a suitable uplift angle can smoothly guide the exhaust gas away from the deflector that the best thermal environment of the deflector channel appears at an impingement angle of 25°and an uplift angle of 5°. This study demonstrates that our model can effectively simulate the impinging flow field, and can be of use for the design of the flame deflector under the multi-engine rocket exhaust gas impact.

Research on convective cooling and thermal protection characteristics of integrated dual-sided deflector system

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“…Giordan et al [5] designed a water injection cooling system for the rocket launch platform, used numerical simulation software to simulate the gas flow field after water injection, and pointed out that water injection to the gas flow field could effectively reduce the thermal shock effect of the gas jet. Z. Zhou et al [6,7,8] conducted numerical simulations of the rocket gas flow field and studied the effect of different water injection angles on the cooling effect of the flow field which provided a theoretical reference for the design of the launch site water injection cooling system. At present, the cooling method of gas jet water injection has been applied at the Kennedy Space Launch Centre in the United States [9,10,11].…”

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