Effects of Injector Recess and Chamber Pressure on Combustion Characteristics of Liquid–Liquid Swirl Coaxial Injectors

Abstract

Combustion characteristics such as combustion performance and combustion stability have been studied experimentally using a small liquid rocket thrust chamber with 19 liquid–liquid swirl coaxial injectors. Data were obtained from static pressure, temperature, and dynamic pressure sensors installed in propellant manifolds and the combustion chamber. While changing the recess length of the injector, characteristic velocity and pressure fluctuation data were collected and analyzed. In addition, chamber pressure was varied between 42 and 54 bar, which covers the sub- and supercritical pressures of oxygen. The results show that the longer recess length generally promotes combustion performance and the spray interaction between injectors in the multielement combustor increases the characteristic velocity. When the chamber pressure is above the critical pressure of oxygen, the recess length scarcely affects the pressure fluctuation. However, when the chamber pressure is below the critical pressure, the shift from external mixing to internal mixing of oxidizer and fuel sheets by the variation of recess length significantly degrades combustion stability and induces strong low-frequency instability. Accordingly, the effects of both recess length and operating chamber pressure must be taken into consideration when designing liquid–liquid swirl coaxial injectors.

Keywords:

• Chamber pressure
• Characteristic velocity
• Combustion characteristics
• Pressure fluctuation
• Recess length
• Swirl coaxial injector

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The study is a part of the “Research and Development of Korea Space Launch Vehicle-I” project financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology and the authors would like to thank the MEST for its support.