Dynamics of Supercritical Flows

Abstract

This research has concentrated on the characterization of mixing for typical liquid rocket injectors. The conditions of interest have encompassed subcritical to supercritical pressures with temperatures below and above the critical temperature, with and without an acoustic field. The project has been largely experimental in-house. A single shear coaxial injector element has been thoroughly studied. This type of injector element is commonly used in many rocket engines (e.g., Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), Vulcain, RS-68, etc). It was found that the mixing in these injectors is governed primarily by the presence or absence of an acoustic field, the outer to inner jet area ratio and the inner jet lip thickness to inner jet diameter, the outer to inner momentum flux ratio, the reduced density of the inner jet, and on whether the pressure is subcritical and supercritical.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 26, 2012
Accession Number
ADA568558

Entities

People

  • Ann Karagozian
  • Bruce Chehroudi
  • Douglas G. Talley
  • Dustin Davis
  • Ivett Leyva
  • Jeffrey Graham
  • Juan Rodriguez
  • Sophonias Teshome

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Sensors
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Chemistry
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Flow Visualization
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Heat Transfer
  • Hydrodynamics
  • Laser Induced Fluorescence
  • Materials Laboratories
  • Materials Processing
  • Materials Science
  • Materials Testing
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Standing Waves
  • Thermodynamics
  • Turbulent Mixing

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Fluid Dynamics.
  • Rocket Propulsion.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Hall-Effect Thruster