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FLUENT MODELLING OF COMBUSTION IN A

DUCTED ROCKET
R.A. Stowe
Defence R&D Canada – Valcartier
A. deChamplain, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Université Laval, Canada
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OUTLINE
• Introduction
• Combustor configurations
• Direct-connect combustion tests
• CFD modelling
• Boundary conditions
• Two phase flow
• Results
– Effect of twostream model on temperatures
– Comparison of modelling and experiments
– Time-dependency
• Conclusions

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INTRODUCTION
• solid propellant rocket motors around for hundreds of years,
evolved into highly reliable and powerful systems
• simpler than liquid fuel rockets
– performance improvement limited since oxidizer onboard
• up to 88% by mass of the propellant
• how do we drastically improve the performance but maintain
the simplicity?
• use an airbreathing system: solid fuel ducted rocket
– also called a ramrocket or integral rocket ramjet
– increased range, higher average speed than solid rocket

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SOLID FUEL DUCTED ROCKET

• not as widely used as other airbreathing propulsion systems
– gas turbines, liquid fuel ramjets
– but less complex (no pumps, compressors, etc.)
– uses a gas generator to provide “fuel” for the ramjet
combustor

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OPERATION OF A DUCTED ROCKET

• Ducted rocket launched

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OPERATION OF A DUCTED ROCKET

• Ducted rocket launched

• Booster ignites, accelerates to Mach 1.2-1.4

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OPERATION OF A DUCTED ROCKET

• Ducted rocket launched

• Booster ignites, accelerates to Mach 1.2-1.4
• Booster burns out, port covers open, gas generator fuel ignites

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OPERATION OF A DUCTED ROCKET

• Ducted rocket launched

• Booster ignites, accelerates to Mach 1.2-1.4
• Booster burns out, port covers open, gas generator fuel ignites
• Gas generator exhaust injected into the combustor,
mixes with the air, and reacts

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DUCTED ROCKET FUEL

• gas generator exhaust is “fuel” for ramjet phase
– lots of solid carbon soot, combustible gases

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COMBUSTOR CONFIGURATIONS
• wanted to look at a wide variety of combustor geometries
– better validate a single CFD methodology
• variety of air and fuel injectors, dome heights, nozzles
• same configurations for non-reacting flow CFD and water
tunnel (previously presented) and direct-connect
combustion experiments
air injector diameter
air inlet angle

fuel port Combustor 100mm

fuel injector 57-100mm (Dome height)

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DIRECT-CONNECT
COMBUSTION TESTS
• to provide validation for CFD modelling predictions
• to simplify experiments, used a rich mixture of reacted
ethylene/air to simulate the solid fuel gas generator exhaust
– gives similar
exhaust
composition,
simplified
experiments

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CFD MODELLING
• used CFD package FLUENT V5 (Full Navier-Stokes)
• structured grid of approximately 50K hexahedral cells

• RNG turbulence model

(implies quasi-steady
flow)
– flow fully turbulent
(Re = 106)
– superior to k-ε for
recirculating,
swirling flow

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CFD MODELLING (2)

• PDF combustion model
– have separate fuel and oxidizer streams
• turbulent diffusion flame, mixing-controlled
• accounts for the turbulence/chemistry interaction
– only two extra equations per fuel stream, relatively easy
to converge (compared to finite-rate model)
• solve for mixture fraction and its variance which
determines density, composition, and temperature
– FLUENT Version 5 requires the incompressible solver
• neglected nozzle, M < 0.3 in most of combustor

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BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
• inlets
– uniform velocity profiles
– 10% turbulence intensity
– characteristic length 1/4 diameter
• air: vitiated air at ≈ 600K
• fuel: mixture of reacted ethylene/air
– calculated equilibrium compositions at fuel injector exit
– same exhaust composition as GAP/Carbon solid fuel
– mole fraction carbon (solid) ≈ 40%, hydrogen ≈ 25%

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TWO PHASE FLOW MODEL

• with the PDF combustion model, mixture of fuel and
oxidizer (up to a rich limit) are in equilibrium
– assumes infinitely fast reactions
– do solids react instantaneously?
• previously used a onestream model
– gases and solids treated as single, homogeneous stream
– tendency to overpredict temperatures in the combustor
• could model as two fuel streams, one of gases, other as
solids with particle model
– no reference to this approach in literature cited
• only two phase modelling was kerosene injection
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TWO PHASE FLOW MODEL (2)

• soot from typical HC flames made up of agglomerates
(several microns) of carbon spheres < 60 nm in diameter
• collected soot from
ethylene/air gas
generator
• used Malvern
instrument
– assumes that
particles round
– 0.1 to > 200 µm

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TWO PHASE FLOW MODEL (3)

• SEM of collected ethylene/air soot shows agglomerates of
approximately 75 nm diameter carbon spheres
• decomposition of
soot related to
exposed surface area
– number and size
of 75 nm spheres,
not overall size of
agglomerates
• trajectories related to
mass and overall size
of agglomerates
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TWO PHASE FLOW MODEL (4)

• coloured by particle
1 nm particles
density
• trajectories change little
with size below 10 micron 10 nm particles

• based on this, decided to

model particles as 75 nm 75 nm particles
– surface area for
decomposition model
1 µm particles
correct

10 µm particles
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TWO PHASE FLOW MODEL (5)

• particles decompose gradually into CO gas through
combustor controlled by slower of:
• rate of diffusion of oxidizer to particle surface, or
• rate of surface reaction kinetics
• diffusion rate: from an expression for pulverized coal over a
wide range of temperatures:

R1 = C1
[(T p + T∞ )/ 2] 0.75
dp
Ä rate increases as particle diameter decreases

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TWO PHASE FLOW MODEL (6)

• surface kinetics rate: approximation to Nagel-Strickland-
Constable formula for soot oxidation below 2000K:

(
R2 = C2 exp − E / RT p )
Ä for 75 nm particles, decomposition is controlled by the
surface reaction kinetics
• 500 particles are injected individually from the fuel inlet
– Lagrangian reference frame, affected randomly by
turbulence (stochastic particle tracking)
• continuous and dispersed (solid) phase calculations coupled
• particle density decreases as it decomposes (dp constant)
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RESULTS: EFFECT ON
TEMPERATURE FIELDS

Twostream model more diffuse, carries heat release further

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RESULTS: COMPARISON
WITH EXPERIMENTS

Tt 4,exp − Tt 2
ηΔT =
Tt 4,theo − Tt 2

twostream
difference (16%)
almost same as
experimental
uncertainty (13%),
onestream
difference 27%

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TIME DEPENDENCY

Water tunnel visualization

(unsteady)
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TIME DEPENDENCY (2)

• graph of
magnitude of
oscillations
• ramjet ignition at
3 seconds
• pressure
oscillations:
– 100 kPa
peak-to-peak
– mean pressure
420 kPa
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CONCLUSIONS
• a twostream PDF model, with the gases and solids treated
separately, was implemented
– changed the temperature distribution in the combustor
over the onestream PDF model
– improved combustion efficiency predictions
significantly over the onestream PDF model
• unsteady phenomena may explain some of the differences
between predictions and experimental results
– unsteady flow seen in water tunnel
– oscillations of 25% of the mean pressure were
measured in the combustor
• might be coupled to combustion processes

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