Title
Numerical simulation of a liquid propellant rocket motor
Date Issued
01 January 2001
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
National Institute for Space Research
Abstract
This work presents a numerical simulation of the flow field in a liquid propellant engine chamber and exit nozzle using techniques to allow the results to be taken as starting points for designing those propulsive systems. This was done using a Finite Volume method simulating the different flow regimes which usually take place in those systems. As the flow field has regions ranging from the low subsonic to the supersonic regimes, the numerical code used, initially developed for compressible flows, was modified to work proficiently in the Whole velocity range. It is well known that codes have been developed in CFD, for either compressibor incompressible flows, the joint treatment of both together being complex even today, given the small number of references available in this area. Here an existing code for compressible flow was used and primitive variables, the pressure, the Cartesian components of the velocity and the temperature instead of the conserved variables were introduced in the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. This was done to permit the treatment at any Mach number. Unstructured meshes with adaptive refinements were employed here. The convective terms were treated with upwind first and second order methods. the numerical stability was kept with artificial dissipation and in the spatial coverage one used a five stage Runge-Kutta scheme for the Fluid Mechanics and the VODE (Value of Ordinary Differential Equations) scheme along with the Chemkin II in the chemical reacting solution. During the development of this code simulating the flow in a rocket engine, comparison tests were made with several different types of internal and external flows, at different velocities, seeking to establish the confidence level of the techniques being used. these comparisons were done with existing theoretical results and with other codes already validated and well accepted by the CFD community.
Start page
83
End page
86
Volume
10
Issue
1
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ingeniería aeroespacial
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-76549126469
Source
Journal of Thermal Science
ISSN of the container
10032169
Sponsor(s)
Part of this work was done under the sponsorship of the Brazilian National Research Council, (CNPq), Project Number 352289/92-9 and Foundation for Support of Research in the State of S~o Paulo, (FAPESP), Project Number 98/02030-2.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus