Numerical Investigation of Supercritical Coolant Flow in Liquid Rocket Engine

Understanding and predicting the flowfield and heat transfer characteristics in cooling channels are prerequisite to improve design and performance of regeneratively cooled rocket thrust chambers. In order to realize them, a CFD code, able to predict such characteristics, is developed based on a pressure-based solver and the cubic-type equation of state to take into account the real gas effect. As a preliminary study, simulations of transcritical parahydrogen flows in a uniformely heated circular tube are performed in order to validate the developed code against the reference experiment and investigate the flowfield and the heat transfer characteristics under transcritical conditions. The computed results agree well with the experimental data with regard to the wall temperature, the heat transfer coefficient, the bulk pressure and temperature. Also, the peculiar behavior, called “heat transfer deterioration”, under transcritical condition with high heat flux, is successfully predicted. The simulated flowfield reveal the mechanism of it. The parametric studies with different heat flux levels clarify the condition in which the heat transfer deterioration takes places.