Progress and Challenges in Liquid Rocket Combustion Stability Modeling
Abstract
Progress and challenges in combustion stability modeling in rocket engines are considered using a representative longitudinal mode combustor developed at Purdue University. The CVRC or Continuously Variable Resonance Chamber has a translating oxidizer post that can be used to tune the resonant modes in the chamber with the combustion response leading to self-excited high-amplitude pressure oscillations. The three-dimensional hybrid RANS-LES model is shown to be capable of accurately predicting the self-excited instabilities. The frequencies of the dominant first longitudinal mode as well as the higher harmonics are well-predicted and their relative amplitudes are also reasonably well-captured. Post-processing the data to obtain the spatial distribution of the Rayleigh index shows the existence of large regions of positive coupling between the heat release and the pressure oscillations. Differences in the Rayleigh index distribution between the fuel-rich and fuel-lean cases appears to correlate well with the observation that the fuel-rich case is more unstable than the fuel-lean case.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA575728
Entities
People
- D. Talley
- M. Harvazinski
- V. Sankaran
- William Anderson
Organizations
- Air Force Research Laboratory