Abstract The design of high-performance liquid rocket engines is highly dependent on the management of the heat transfer rate produced by the combustion-gas and entering the thrust chamber wall. In particular, the life of the thrust chamber is mainly limited by the level of temperature and heat flux reached in the most thermally solicited part, which is the throat region. Consequently, experimental data of the hot-gas side heat transfer have been acquired since the 1950s. Such studies have increased over time in order to investigate the effect of different propellant combinations, propellant injector configurations, thrust chamber geometries, and combustion chamber pressures. In the present study, about 500 experimental heat transfer data taken from the open literature and relevant to the throat region are collected, manipulated, and analyzed with the main aim to find simplified rules to evaluate the peak heat transfer. Due to the intrinsic variability of the hot-gas side heat transfer and to the non-negligible measurement errors, the found correlations fit the whole set of experimental data with an uncertainty of up to 60%. However, considering specific propellant combinations, like oxygen–hydrogen or oxygen–hydrocarbons, far more reliable regressions are found.
Highlights Hot-gas side heat transfer data of liquid rocket engines are selected and analyzed. Only the most thermally solicited part, which is the throat region, is considered. Three correlations based on different hot-gas reference state are considered. The whole set of the experimental data is correlated with up to 60% of uncertainty. Uncertainty is reduced to 20% when considering the propellants O2-H2 only.
Overview and analysis of the experimentally measured throat heat transfer in liquid rocket engine thrust chambers
Acta Astronautica ; 184 ; 46-58
2021-03-29
13 pages
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch