Solution-limited time stepping method and numerical simulation of single-element rocket engine combustor

The focus of the research is to gain a better understanding of the mixing and combustion of propellants in a confined single element rocket engine combustor. The approach taken is to use the unsteady computational simulations of both liquid and gaseous oxygen reacting with gaseous hydrogen to study the effects of transient processes, recirculation regions and density variations under supercritical conditions. The physics of combustion involve intimate coupling between fluid dynamics, chemical kinetics and intense energy release and take place over an exceptionally wide range of scales. In the face of these monumental challenges, it remains the engineer’s task to find acceptable simulation approach and reliable CFD algorithm for combustion simulations. To provide the computational robustness to allow detailed analyses of such complex problems, we start by investigating a method for enhancing the reliability of implicit computational algorithms and decreasing their sensitivity to initial conditions without adversely impacting their efficiency. Efficient convergence is maintained by specifying a large global CFL number while reliability is improved by limiting the local CFL number such that the solution change in any cell is less than a specified tolerance. The magnitude of the solution change is estimated from the calculated residual in a manner that requires negligible computational time. The method precludes unphysical excursions in Newton-like iterations in highly non-linear regions where Jacobians are changing rapidly as well as non-physical results during the computation. The method is tested against a series of problems to identify its characteristics and to verify the approach. The results reveal a substantial improvement in convergence reliability of implicit CFD applications that enables computations starting from simple initial conditions. The method is applied in the unsteady combustion simulations and allows long time running of the code without user intervention. The initial transient leading to stationary conditions in unsteady combustion simulations is investigated by considering flow establishment in model combustors. The duration of the transient is shown to be dependent on the characteristic turn-over time for recirculation zones and the time for the chamber pressure to reach steady conditions. Representative comparisons of the time-averaged, stationary results with experiment are presented to document the computations. The flow dynamics and combustion for two sizes of chamber diameters and two different wall thermal boundary conditions are investigated to assess the role of the recirculation regions on the mixing/combustion process in rocket engine combustors. Results are presented in terms of both instantaneous and time-averaged solutions. As a precursor to liquid oxygen/gaseous hydrogen (LO2/GH 2) combustion simulations, the evolution of a liquid nitrogen (LN 2) jet initially at a subcritical temperature and injected into a supercritical environment is first investigated and the results are validated against experimental data. Unsteady simulations of non-reacting LO2/GH 2 are then performed for a single element shear coaxial injector. These cold flow calculations are then extended to reacting LO2/GH 2 flows to demonstrate the capability of the numerical procedure for high-density-gradient supercritical reacting flows