Numerical Simulation of Dome Filling in an Experimental Rocket Engine Mockup

摘要

Experiments are carried out with substitution fluids (air and water), without heat and mass transfer on a rocket engine mockup. The work presented here intends to reproduce the experimental results using incompressible two-phase flow simulations. The geometry used is representative of the experimental mockup composed of a feeding pipe, a dome, and a number of injectors. The objective of the paper is to adapt a Eulerian-Eulerian two-fluid model approach to simulate the filling of a dome and to test its ability to reproduce some experimental evidences. The main difficulties to be faced are the fast transients in a complex geometry, including in particular the valve opening sequence, and the drastic evolution of the two-phase flow regime as the flow evolves from gas only to liquid only. An important work has been conducted to obtain the proper inlet conditions to be imposed in the code in coherence with the experiments. The influences of the turbulence modeling and the interfacial momentum transfer modeling are also studied. The former has no macroscopic or local effect on the mass flow rate of water, the mass of water in the dome, and the dome pressure. The drag model, however, has a major impact on the results as much globally as locally. The Simmer-like drag model is preferred in comparison to the Large Interface Model, due to a better agreement with the experimental data. Moreover, it has to be highlighted that the Simmer-like model is very sensitive to the inclusion diameter.