Chemical modeling for methane oxy-combustion in Liquid Rocket Engines

Methane–oxygen burning is considered for many future rocket engines for practicality and cost reasons. As this combustion is slower than hydrogen–oxygen, flame ignition and stability may be more difficult to obtain. To address these questions, numerical simulation with realistic chemistry is appropriate. However the high pressure and turbulence intensity encountered in rocket engines enhance drastically the stiffness of methane oxy-combustion. In this work, Analytically Reduced Chemistry (ARC) is proposed for accurate chemistry description at a reasonable computational cost. An ARC scheme is specifically derived for typical rocket engine conditions. It is validated by comparison with its parent skeletal mechanism on a series of laminar flames. Then the numerical stiffness of chemistry is overcome with an original approach for time integration, allowing to run simulations close to the acoustic time step whatever the chemical stiffness. It is demonstrated on laminar cases that the flame structure is well preserved, and that numerical stability is ensured while decreasing significantly the computational cost. The performance of ARC with the fast time integration method is finally demonstrated in a 3D Large-Eddy Simulation of a lab-scale Liquid Rocket Engine combustion chamber, where a detailed flame analysis is conducted.