Prediction of low frequency combustion instability in H2O2/Kerosene bipropellant rocket engine

Abstract

Combustion instabilities are inevitable problems for all rocket engine development including liquid-propellant rocket engine (LRE). Combustion instabilities must be suppressed as they have possibility to cause structural damage due to increased instantaneous pressure and heat flux to the chamber wall. Researches on combustion instabilities in rocket engine normally done computational fluid dynamics (CFD) or sub-scale thruster experiment. The limitation of both methods are massive computational resources and high testing cost respectively. Instead of two, analytical models can be used in design stage of an engine system owing to its fastness and low resource requirement. In this research, simulation based on the damped dual time-lag model is applied to predict low frequency combustion instability of H2O2/kerosene bipropellant thruster. The model predicted low frequency combustion instability for low O/F ratio test case but inaccurate for high O/F test cases and the model reveals that oxidizer feedline system has dominant effect on the predicted low frequency combustion instability.