Numerical Design Investigation of a Hydro-MechanicalPulsator for Liquid Rocket Injector Research

摘要

Injector behavior in the presence of strong pressure pulsations in a Liquid Rocket Engine (LRE), are problematic due to a lack of generators of strong periodical pulsation, particularly in high frequency range, which is typical for high frequency combustion instability (HFCI). To overcome this problem, a hydro-mechanical pulsator was designed and built at the Propulsion Research Center at UAHuntsville. The present computational fluid dynamics (CFD) effort utilizes the unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) approach to model the pulsating turbulent flow inside the hydro-mechanical pulsator. Results obtained from sliding/deformation grids coupled with two-layer low-Reynolds number RNG k-model showed the possibility to control the form of pulsation based on the geometry of the orifices of the rotating valve to define its main parameters and determine optimum geometry for obtaining a sinusoidal harmonic response.