CFD Simulation of Penn State GO2/GH Single Element Combustor

Abstract

A single element combustor known as “Penn State Preburner Combustor” is modelled numerically using the commercial CFD code ANSYS CFX. The target of the CFD simulations is the wall heat flux which is known from experiment. The modelled rocket combustion chamber has a single shear coaxial injector and operates on gaseous oxygen and hydrogen in a stage combustion regime. The turbulent flow in the combustion chamber is modelled with the use of the Favre averaged Navier-Stokes equations and the SST turbulence model. Turbulent non-premixed flame is modelled with the help of a developed EDM type model. The developed turbulent combustion model results in a good agreement with the experimental data, a good convergence, and a small computational time. A performed mesh convergence study has allowed obtaining a mesh-independent solution on a mesh with 1.5 million nodes. The developed CFD model has good qualities and will be used in the further simulations of rocket combustion chambers.