Safety Analysis of Liquid Rocket Engine Using Bayesian Networks

Safety analysis for liquid rocket engine has a great meaning for shortening development cycle, saving development expenditure and reducing development risk. The relationship between the structure and component of liquid rocket engine is much more complex, furthermore test data are absent in development phase. Thereby, the uncertainties exist in safety analysis for liquid rocket engine. A safety analysis model integrated with FMEA(failure mode and effect analysis) based on Bayesian networks (BN) is brought forward for liquid rocket engine, which can combine qualitative analysis with quantitative decision. The method has the advantages of fusing multi-information, saving sample amount and having high veracity. An example shows that the method is efficient.

Progress in Technology of Main Liquid Rocket Engines of Launch Vehicles in China

Liquid propellant rocket engines for a launch vehicle are an essential aerospace technology, representing the advanced level of hi-tech in a country. In recent years, China’s aerospace industry has made remarkable achievements, and liquid rocket engine technology has also been effectively developed. In this article, the development processes of China’s liquid rocket engines are discussed. Then, the performance features of China’s new generation liquid rocket engines as well as the flight tests of the new-generation launch vehicles are introduced. Finally, the development direction and the most recent progress of the next generation large-thrust liquid rocket engine is presented.

Research on Key Technologies for Reusable Liquid Rocket Engines

Based on current research,the development trend of reusable liquid rocket engines was analyzed.Key technologies and research focuses of the reusable liquid rocket engine have been analyzed and summarized,and then suggestions on the development of future key technologies are proposed.

Numerical and Experimental Characterizations of SiFRP Ablator for the Application to Liquid Rocket Engine Combustors

The ablative material is supposed to be one of good candidates for LRE （liquid rocket engine） combustion chamber to achieve both high reliability and low cost and a numerical analysis for the ablator is considered to be a potentially efficient tool to reduce cost as well. So far, ablators have been successfully applied for many SRM （solid rocket motors）, but the application to LRE is still quite limited in Japan. The authors believe that this is primarily because of the unpredictable nature of the heat load from combustion gases to the combustor wall. Indeed, reliable thermal design of ablative combustion chamber, namely reliable prediction of thermal performance, needs both reliable heat load model and reliable ablator response model. This paper elaborates our research activities and our recent research findings.

Brief Review of N2O Decomposition Catalysts for Engines

A brief review of nitrous oxide decomposition catalysts was presented.The features of catalyst operating conditions in low-thrust engines of space vehicles and requirements to monopropellant(hydrogen peroxide,hydrazine,nitrous oxide)decomposition catalysts were considered.A scientific basis for development of a nitrous oxide decomposition catalyst and general principles for selection of efficient catalysts were formulated.The results of selecting catalyst systems for the development of decomposition catalysts for N2O as a monopropellant were presented.Preliminary selection of catalyst systems for the development of a catalyst designed for low-thrust rocket engines(LTREs)was carried out:supporter—Al2O3 and ZrO2;active substances—Co,Ni,Fe,Pd,Rh,Pt,Ru,Ir,NiO,Fe2O3,RuO2,Rh2O3,PdO,IrO2,PtO2,CoO,Al2O3,La2NiO4,Nd2NiO4,Pr 2NiO4,La2O3,TiO2,NiO,La2O3,TiO2,ZnO.With 71 references.

Gas film/regenerative composite cooling characteristics of the liquid oxygen/liquid methane (LOX/LCH4) rocket engine

The thermal protection of rocket engines is a crucial aspect of rocket engine design.In this paper,the gas film/regenerative composite cooling of the liquid oxygen/liquid methane(LOX/LCH4)rocket engine thrust chamber was investigated.A gas film/regenerative composite cooling model was developed based on the Grisson gas film cooling efficiency formula and the one-dimensional regenerative cooling model.The accuracy of the model was validated through experiments conducted on a 6 kg/s level gas film/regenerative composite cooling thrust chamber.Additionally,key parameters related to heat transfer performance were calculated.The results demonstrate that the model is sufficiently accurate to be used as a preliminary design tool.The temperature rise error of the coolant,when compared with the experimental results,was found to be less than 10%.Although the pressure drop error is relatively large,the calculated results still provide valuable guidance for heat transfer analysis.In addition,the performance of composite cooling is observed to be superior to regenerative cooling.Increasing the gas film flow rate results in higher cooling efficiency and a lower gas-side wall temperature.Furthermore,the position at which the gas film is introduced greatly impacts the cooling performance.The optimal introduction position for the gas film is determined when the film is introduced from a single row of holes.This optimal introduction position results in a more uniform wall temperature distribution and reduces the peak temperature.Lastly,it is observed that a double row of holes,when compared to a single row of holes,enhances the cooling effect in the superposition area of the gas film and further lowers the gas-side wall temperature.These results provide a basis for the design of gas film/regenerative composite cooling systems.

Genetic Algorithm to Optimize the Design of Main Combustor and Gas Generator in Liquid Rocket Engines

A genetic algorithm was used to develop optimal design methods for the regenerative cooled combustor and fuel-rich gas generator of a liquid rocket engine. For the combustor design, a chemical equilibrium analysis was applied, and the profile was calculated using Rao's method. One-dimensional heat transfer was assumed along the profile, and cooling channels were designed. For the gas-generator design, non-equilibrium properties were derived from a counterflow analysis, and a vaporization model for the fuel droplet was adopted to calculate residence time. Finally, a genetic algorithm was adopted to optimize the designs. The combustor and gas generator were optimally designed for 30-tonf, 75-tonf, and 150-tonf engines. The optimized combustors demonstrated superior design characteristics when compared with previous non-optimized results. Wall temperatures at the nozzle throat were optimized to satisfy the requirement of 800 K, and specific impulses were maximized. In addition, the target turbine power and a burned-gas temperature of 1000 K were obtained from the optimized gas-generator design.

Analysis of combustion instability via constant volume combustion in a LOX/RP-1 bipropellant liquid rocket engine

Turbulent two-phase reacting flow in the chamber of LOX/RP-1 bipropellant liquid rocket engine is numerically investigated in this paper. The predicted pressure and mean axial velocity are qualitatively consistent with the experimental measurements. The self-excited pressure oscillations are obtained without any disturbance introduced through the initial and boundary conditions. It is found that amount of abrupt pressure peaks appear frequently and stochastically in the head regions of the chamber, which are the important sources to drive and strengthen combustion instability. Such abrupt pressures are induced by local constant volume combustion, because local combustible gas mixtures with high temperature are formed and burnt out suddenly due to some fuel droplets reaching their critical state in a rich oxygen surrounding. A third Damkhler number is defined as the ratio of the characteristic time of a chemical reaction to the characteristic time of a pressure wave expansion to measure the relative intensity of acoustic propagation and combustion process in thrusters. The analysis of the third Damkhler number distributions in the whole thrust chamber shows that local constant volume combustion happens in the head regions, while constant pressure combustion presents in the downstream regions. It is found that the combustion instability occurs in the head regions within about 30 mm from the thruster head.

Numerical study of operational processes in a GOx-kerosene rocket engine with liquid film cooling

Combustion process inside kerosene-GOx rocket combustor with kerosene Alm cooling is studied,and a modeling approach is proposed.The paper suggests to use the Lagrangian particle tracking technique to model fuel film behavior while the continuous fluid is simulated via the Navier-Stokes system of Favre-averaged equations.The approach is validated over the 12 experimental regimes by the criterions of characteristic velocity and pressure,ence on the adiabatic wall temperatures and relatively low impact on the pressure.In general,phenomena,the calculation of operational processes becomes fast and robust yet precise en-the design process.

Thermal state calculation of chamber in small thrust liquid rocket engine for steady state pulsed mode

This paper presents a method of thermal state calculation of combustion chamber in small thrust liquid rocket engine. The goal is to predict the thermal state of chamber wall by using basic parameters of engine: thrust level, propellants, chamber pressure, injection pattern, film cooling parameters, material of wall and their coating, etc. The difficulties in modeling the startup and shutdown processes of thrusters lie in the fact that there are the conjugated physical processes occurring at various parameters for non-design conditions. A mathematical model to predict the thermal state of the combustion chamber for different engine operation modes is developed. To simulate the startup and shutdown processes, a quasi-steady approach is applied by replacing the transient process with time-variant operating parameters of steady-state processes. The mathematical model is based on several principles and data commonly used for heat transfer modeling: geometry of flow part, gas dynamics of flow, thermodynamics of propellants and combustion spices, convective and radiation heat flows, conjugated heat transfer between hot gas and wall, and transient approach for calculation of thermal state of construction. Calculations of the thermal state of the combustion chamber in single-turn-on mode show good convergence with the experimental results. The results of pulsed modes indicate a large temperature gradient on the internal wall surface of the chamber between pulses and the thermal state of the wall strongly depends on the pulse duration and the interval.

Conceptual Design for a Kerosene Fuel-rich Gas-generator of a Turbopump-fed Liquid Rocket Engine

A design method for a kerosene fuel-rich gas-generator of a liquid rocket engine using turbopumps to supply propellant was performed at a conceptual level. The gas-generator creates hot gases, enabling the turbine to operate the turbopumps. A chemical non-equilibrium analysis and a droplet vaporization model were used for the estimation of the burnt gas properties and characteristic chamber length. A premixed counter-flow flame analysis was performed for the prediction of the burnt gas properties, namely the temperature, the specific heat ratio and heat capacity, and the chemical reaction time. To predict the vaporization time, the Spalding model, using a single droplet in convective condition, was used. The minimum residence time in the chamber and the characteristic length were calculated by adding the reaction time and the vaporization time. Using the characteristic length, the design methods for the fuel-rich gas-generator were established. Finally, a parametric study was achieved for the effects of the O/F ratio, mass flow rate, chamber pressure, initial droplet temperature, initial droplet diameter and initial droplet velocity.

Verification on Spray Simulation of a Pintle Injector for Liquid Rocket Engine

The pintle injector used for a liquid rocket engine is a newly re-attracted injection system famous for its wide throttle ability with high efficiency. The pintle injector has many variations with complex inner structures due to its moving parts. In order to study the rotating flow near the injector tip, which was observed from the cold flow experiment using water and air, a numerical simulation was adopted and a verification of the numerical model was later conducted. For the verification process, three types of experimental data including velocity distributions of gas flows, spray angles and liquid distribution were all compared using simulated results. The numerical simulation was performed using a commercial simulation program with the Eulerian multiphase model and axisymmetric two dimensional grids. The maximum and minimum velocities of gas were within the acceptable range of agreement, however, the spray angles experienced up to 25% error when the momentum ratios were increased. The spray density distributions were quantitatively measured and had good agreement. As a result of this study, it was concluded that the simulation method was properly constructed to study specific flow characteristics of the pintle injector despite having the limitations of two dimensional and coarse grids.

Development of Preliminary Design Program for Combustor of Regenerative Cooled Liquid Rocket Engine

An integrated program was established to design a combustor for a liquid rocket engine and to analyze regenerative cooling results on a preliminary design level.Properties of burnt gas from a kerosene-LOx mixture in the combustor and rocket performance were calculated from CEA which is the code for the calculation of chemical equilibrium.The heat transfer of regenerative cooling was analyzed by using SUPERTRAPP code for coolant properties and by one-dimensional correlations of the heat transfer coefficient from the combustor liner to the coolant.Profiles of the combustors of F-1 and RS-27A engines were designed from similar input data and the present results were compared to actual data for validation.Finally,the combustors of 30 tonf class,75 tonf class and 150 tonf class were designed from the required thrust,combustion chamber,exit pressure and mixture ratio of propellants.The wall temperature,heat flux and pressure drop were calculated for heat transfer analysis of regenerative cooling using the profiles.

Coupled Lagrangian impingement spray model for doublet impinging injectors under liquid rocket engine operating conditions

To predict the effect of the liquid rocket engine combustion chamber conditions on the impingement spray, the conventional uncoupled spray model for impinging injectors is extended by considering the coupling of the jet impingement process and the ambient gas field. The new coupled model consists of the plain-orifice sub-model, the jet-jet impingement sub-model and the droplet collision sub-model. The parameters of the child droplet are determined with the jet-jet impingement sub-model using correlations about the liquid jet parameters and the chamber conditions.The overall model is benchmarked under various impingement angles, jet momentum and offcenter ratios. Agreement with the published experimental data validates the ability of the model to predict the key spray characteristics, such as the mass flux and mixture ratio distributions in quiescent air. Besides, impinging sprays under changing ambient pressure and non-uniform gas flow are investigated to explore the effect of liquid rocket engine chamber conditions. First, a transient impingement spray during engine start-up phase is simulated with prescribed pressure profile. The minimum average droplet diameter is achieved when the orifices work in cavitation state, and is about 30% smaller than the steady single phase state. Second, the effect of non-uniform gas flow produces off-center impingement and the rotated spray fan by 38°. The proposed model suggests more reasonable impingement spray characteristics than the uncoupled one and can be used as the first step in the complex simulation of coupling impingement spray and combustion in liquid rocket engines.

Regenerative Cooling for Liquid Rocket Engines

Heat transfer in the thrust chamber is of great importance in the design of liquid propellant rocketengines. Regenerative cooling is an advanced method which can ensure not only the proper runningbut also higher performance of a rocket engine. The theoretical model is complicated, it relates to fluiddynamics, heat transfer, combustion, etc... In this papers a regenerative cooling model is presented.Effects such as radiation, heat transfer to environment, variable thermal properties and coking areincluded in the model. This model can be applied to all kinds of liquid propellant rocket engines aswell as similar constructions. The modularized computer code is completed in the work.

Study of pressure surge during priming phase of start transient in an initially unprimed pump-fed liquid rocket engine

In this paper, transient phenomenon during start up process of a pump fed liquidrocket engine is investigated through numerical simulation. The engine studied in this workis designed such that engine systems are not wetted with propellant until the engine is com-manded to start. This is achieved by positioning the valves for propellant admission at the inter-face of test stand/flight stage and the engine. To evaluate engine performance during starttransient for such systems, unsteady flow simulation was conducted using Method of Charac-teristics and equations for priming. The same has been reported in this work. The results indi-cated a brief period of abrupt pressure rise at pump upstream after opening of the propellantadmission valves, during the process of priming of engine systems at valve downstream.The peak pressure obtained was significantly higher than the propellant tank pressure as wellas the steady state pump suction pressure. The transitory pressure rise was found to occurdue to flow resistance at impeller inlet caused by formation of a forced vortex for orientingthe flow through impeller blades during off design transient regime. The maximum pressureat pump upstream, as computed from start transient simulation, was used as a design inputfor pump inlet feed lines. The engine was realized and subsequently qualified in a ground test facility. Hot test data obtained for pressure and flow rate during transient regime were found tobe in good agreement with the simulation results.

Nonlinear theory of combustion stability in liquid rocket engine based on chemistry dynamics

Detailed models of combustion instability based on chemistry dynamics are developed. The results show that large activation energy goes against the combustion stability. The heat transfer coefficient between the wall and the combust gas is an important bifurcation parameter for the combustion instability. The acoustics modes of the chamber are in competition and cooperation with each other for limited vibration energy. Thermodynamics criterion of combustion stability can be deduced from the nonlinear thermodynamics. Correlations of the theoretical results and historical experiments indicate that chemical kinetics play a critical role in the combustion instability.

Numerical simulation of combustion stability of liquid rocket engine based on chemistry dynamics

Combustion instability of O2/kerosene, O2/kerosene/hydrogen, and O2/kerosene/hydro- gen spray flame is numerically studied. The numerical results of combustion self-oscillation are consistent with the historical experiments. Hydrogen is helpful to stabilizing oxygen/hydrocarbon combustion. High gas injecting velocity of the coaxial injector would increase the combustion stability. Contrary to the former expectation, the most sensitive region for combustion instability is not where the heat releases most intensely but is the low-temperature premixed region near the injectors. According to the simulation, the technology steps, such as adding catalyzer to decrease the reaction activity energy, or improving the injector design to reduce the premixed low temperature region, would improve the combustion stability.

Dynamic interaction between clustered liquid propellant rocket engines under their asynchronous start-ups

A nonlinear mathematical model of the low-frequency dynamics of the clustered multi-engine rocket propulsion system has been developed and the computations of the engine transient processes during the start-ups of the four-engine propulsion system with a shared feed system have been made applied.Based on propulsion system start-up modeling the influence of the connectivity of engines in a cluster on the starting characteristics of individual engines is shown.In particular,an advanced nonlinear mathematical model of the pump cavitation phenomena is a distinctive feature of the mathematical model.The computation results showed that the asynchronous engines start-ups during rocket lift-off lead to severely nonlinear engine transients and clustered engine thrust misbalance.The influence of the rocket engines asynchronous start-ups on the clustered feed system transients depends on many factors,mainly on from the clustered feed system low-frequency dynamics,the magnitude of the disturbance and the phase difference between disturbances acting on different branches of the feed system.The deep lingering dips in the flow rate and pressure transients are possible due to the nonlinear dynamic interaction of the engines.In case of great pressure dips at the pump inlet(up to the pressure of saturated vapors during significant periods of start-up time)the cavitation breakdowns of the pumps of one or more engines from the cluster are possible.This can disrupt the operation of the entire propulsion system and leads to the failure of the launch vehicle mission.

液体火箭发动机健康监控技术研究进展

液体火箭发动机健康监控技术作为保障运载火箭安全、可靠发射的核心关键技术,经过几十年的发展,有力推动了航天事业的进步。介绍了液体火箭发动机健康监控技术中故障检测与诊断、容错控制与健康监控系统研制等技术的研究现状与发展趋势;梳理了健康监控领域面临的重难点问题,并提出相应的解决方案。分析展望了液体火箭发动机健康监控技术未来发展趋势,为从事火箭发动机健康监控技术研究的科研人员提供参考。