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Simulations of Hybrid Rocket Flowfields

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 SP2016-3125176

SIMULATIONS OF HYBRID ROCKET FLOWFIELDS

INCLUDING MODELING OF
FUEL PYROLYSIS AND THERMAL RADIATION

Giuseppe Leccese, Daniele Bianchi, Francesco Nasuti

Sapienza University of Rome

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica e Aerospaziale, Via Eudossiana 18, Rome, Italy
giuseppe.leccese@uniroma1.it, daniele.bianchi@uniroma1.it, francesco.nasuti@uniroma1.it

KEYWORDS: hybrid rockets, fuel pyrolysis, 1 INTRODUCTION

gas/surface interaction, thermal radiation, discrete
transfer method.
ABSTRACT:
Simulations of the flowfield in a lab-scale hybrid
rocket motor, using gaseous oxygen and hydroxyl-
terminated polybutadiene as propellants, are car-
ried out with a Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes
solver. The fuel grain regression rate is described
by means of a detailed gas/surface interaction
model based on surface mass and energy bal-
ances. Moreover, the radiative wall heat flux is
included in the energy balance, after being com-
puted integrating the radiative transfer equation for
gray/diffuse wall and gray/non-scattering media via
discrete transfer method within the whole thrust
chamber. The role played by chamber pressure
and port diameter on the radiative wall heat flux is
examined. Then, the effects of thermal radiation
on the whole flowfield, especially on the regression
rate, are discussed in detail. Finally, numerical re-
sults are compared against experimental data in or-
der to evaluate the prediction capability of the nu-
merical setup.
Hybrid rockets are conventionally based on a liquid
or gaseous oxidizer and a solid fuel. In particular,
the oxidizer injected in the liquid or gaseous phase
into the grain ports, reacts with the pyrolysis gas
produced on the fuel grain surface and forms a tur-
bulent diffusion flame, which in turn provides the
convective and radiative heat flux needed to sus-
tain the fuel pyrolysis process [1].
Hybrid rockets present some advantages com-
pared to solid rocket motors and liquid rocket en-
gines. With respect to solid rocket motors they
present: safety during fabrication, storage and
operations, throttling, shutdown and restart capa-
bilities, less ambient temperature sensitivity and
higher specific impulse. With respect to liquid rocket
engines, on the other hand, they show: greater
simplicity, reliability and reduced costs and higher
propellant density. For all these reasons hybrid
rockets are considered one of the envisaged fu-
ture generation propulsion systems. Moreover, the
large range of achievable performance, combined
with thrust flexibility, makes them suitable for a wide
range of space applications [2].
The development of hybrid rockets has not
achieved the same level of maturity as solid and liq-
uid traditional systems and requires a better under-
standing of physico-chemical phenomena inside
the motor [2]. Classical studies on hybrid propul-
sion have been based on simplified models of the
boundary layer in order to derive the heat flux to the
surface of the solid fuel and, therefore, its regres-
sion rate [3]. This simplified analysis, however, can
not take into account many of the complex physico-
chemical phenomena occurring in the thrust cham-
ber, making necessary the development of more
advanced models based on computational fluid dy-
namics (CFD). In particular, since fluidynamic and
chemical time scales are much faster than the re-
gression rate time scale, the main interest is to ob-
tain steady-state solutions, by solving Reynolds av-
eraged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations, with suit-
able turbulence closure models.
The modeling of fuel pyrolysis and thermal ra-
diation, which are important phenomena in hybrid
rockets, requires an additional effort.
Fuel pyrolysis is crucial because it determines
the fuel mass flow rate reacting with the oxidizer
injected into the port and it directly influences the
performance of the motor. The modeling of such
phenomenon requires the ability to describe the in-
teraction between the reacting flow and the solid
surface by means of a suitable gas/surface inter-
action (GSI) boundary condition, that allows to en-
force at wall a proper balance of mass and energy.
Thermal radiation is also very important since it
may contribute in a non-negligible way to the re-
gression rate. In fact, the diffusion flame which is
established close to the wall is an important source
of radiative energy directed toward the grain. Ther-
mal radiation modeling involves a number of diffi-
cult aspects, including directivity, spectral depen-
dence, sooting, possibly non-equilibrium and cou-
pling to the flowfield. Different computational meth-
ods, including zonal, flux, spherical harmonic, dis-
crete ordinate, Monte Carlo and discrete trans-
fer [4] methods, have been developed in order to
solve the radiative transfer equation (RTE), the gov-
erning equation for thermal radiation in participat-
ing media. While with increasing computing power
the first four listed methods converge to a solu-
tion vitiated by the assumptions introduced, the last
two converge to the actual solution of the problem.
The Monte Carlo method, however, is based on
stochastic assumptions, which makes the coupling
to a CFD solver more difficult.
In the present work, a thermal radiation model
developed using the discrete transfer method
(DTM), which requires relatively contained pro-
cessing time and it is able to deal with complex
geometries, is coupled to a CFD solver integrated
with a fuel pyrolysis model based on a GSI bound-
ary condition. The GSI model was already intro-
duced into the CFD code in order to study how the
fuel regression rate is influenced by different injec-
tion modes [5] and by different port diameters in
the case of axial injection [6]. Although the nu-
merical setup was found fairly able to capture the
main features of the motor internal ballistics, com-
parisons with experimental measurements showed
that the regression rate was to a certain extent un-
der predicted, especially for test cases run at low
oxidizer mass fluxes. Moving on these grounds, the
aim of the paper is to improve the previous predic-
tion capability by using the DTM in order to add a
suitable model of thermal radiation to the numerical
setup. Before comparing numerical results and ex-
perimental data, the role played by chamber pres-
sure and port diameter on the radiative wall heat
flux, and its influence on the whole flowfield, are
examined in detail.
2 THEORETICAL AND
NUMERICAL MODEL
Hybrid rocket flowfields are simulated by means
of a suitable in-house CFD solver for three-
dimensional turbulent compressible multi-
component reacting flows with variable ther-
modynamic and transport properties [7]. It
adopts a standard finite volume Godunov formu-
lation, second order accurate in space, to solve
the RANS equations for multi-block structured
meshes, advancing in time by means of an explicit
Runge-Kutta integration. The Spalart-Allmaras
one-equation model [8] is used to compute the
turbulent viscosity. Both turbulent thermal conduc-
tivity and turbulent mass diffusivity are computed
from specific heat at constant pressure, turbulent
viscosity, turbulent Prandtl and Schmidt numbers.
The thermodynamic and transport properties
of each species are approximated by seventh
and fourth-order polynomials of temperature,
respectively [9]. Mixture conductivity and viscosity
are derived from the Wilkes rule. The chemical
reactions are modeled via finite-rate chemistry.
A two reactions and six species global mecha-
nism [10, 11] is used to model the combustion
process between gaseous oxygen (GOX) and
pyrolyzed hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene
(HTPB), represented by 1.3-butadiene.
2.1 Fuel pyrolysis
Fuel pyrolysis imposes further physical modeling
for the interaction between the reacting flow and
the chemically active surface. In fact, an ade-
quate boundary condition, based on mass and en-
ergy balances for a control volume fixed to the
gas/surface interface, must be specified in order to
describe the physics of surface phenomena.
The mass balance is given by:
Yj
Dj + j = mw Yj j = 1, ..., N (1)
where is the gas density, Dj is the species to
mixture diffusion coefficient, Yj is the species mass
fraction and j is the species rate of production at
the surface. Eq. 1 expresses, for each species j =
1, ..., N , the balance between the mass entering the
control volume due to diffusion and pyrolysis and
the mass leaving it by blowing.
The energy balance is given by:
N
T X Yj
k + qw,rad + hj Dj + mw hg =
j=1
(2)
= mw hw + mw cg (Tw Tg,i )
where k is the gas thermal conductivity, T , Tw and
Tg,i are the gas, wall, and grain initial temperatures
and hj , hg and hw are the species, grain and wall
enthalpies. Eq. 2 expresses the balance between
the energy entering the control volume because of
convection, radiation, diffusion and regression and
the energy leaving it because of blowing and con-
duction. Notice that the expression for the conduc-
tive heat flux follows by the steady-state assump-
tion [12], that is a reasonable approximation when
the thermal lag in the solid is sufficiently small, as
actually occurs in the simulated conditions because
of the moderately high regression rate and the low
thermal conductivity of the fuel grain.
Substituting Eq. 1 into Eq. 2, the energy balance
can be re-casted as:
N
T X j
k + qw,rad = mw hj hg +
j=1
m w (3)
+ mw cg (Tw Tg,i )
in order to emphasize that the energy balance is
established between the heat transferred to the
grain via convection and radiation and the heat ab-
sorbed because of chemical reactions and thermal
conduction. The first term at the right hand side, in
fact, represents the chemical heat flux, expressed
by the product between the rate and the heat of py-
rolysis. The rate of pyrolysis is the fuel mass flux
injected from the grain and, according to [13], can
be expressed by the following Arrhenius-type equa-
tion:  
Ea
mw = A exp (4)
RTw
whose constants are reported in Table 1. The heat
of pyrolysis, on the other hand, is given by the term
in parentheses:
N
X j
hj hg = hpyr (5)
j=1
m w
with the fuel grain properties reported in Table 2.
Once the wall temperature is known solving Eq. 3
via Newton-Raphson method, Eq. 4 allows to eval-
uate the fuel mass flux injected into the combustion
chamber and, using the relation:
mw = g r (6)
the fuel grain regression rate.
 A specific wall boundary condition based on the
described GSI model is included into the CFD
code. Such condition has been validated for ab-
lating surfaces in re-entry flows [14] and has been
extended to hybrid rocket applications for both noz-
zle erosion [15] and fuel pyrolysis [5] problems.
Table 1: HTPB chemical kinetics [13].
Surface reaction A, kg/m2 s Ea , kJ/mol
HTPBs C4 H6 2.208 x 103 56.5
Table 2: HTPB properties [16, 17].
small weight of the wall heat transfer, and in par-
ticular of the radiative contribution, as compared
to the whole thermal power generated within the
thrust chamber. In addition, the effect of soot radi-
ation is not yet accounted for in the present study,
but models to consider this contribution are under
development.
The radiative wall heat flux is defined as the in-
tegral of the radiative intensity at wall Iw , projected
into the direction normal to the wall, over the hemi-
spherical solid angle facing the incoming radia-
tion:
Z
qw,rad = Iw sind =
2
Z 2 Z 2 (7)
= Iw sincosdd
0 0

Density Specific heat Heat of pyrolysis where and identify the elevation and azimuth
g , kg/m3 cg , J/kg K hpyr , MJ/kg angles associated to the generic line of sight, re-
960 1632 1.1 spectively.
The radiative intensity at wall coming from a
generic line of sight can be computed integrating
the RTE along the whole radiation path length. The
RTE expresses the balance of the radiative inten-
2.2 Thermal radiation sity I along a generic direction s including con-
Thermal radiation has to be separately modeled tributions due to absorption/emission and eventu-
in order to compute the radiative wall heat flux ally in/out-scattering. Under the assumption of
needed by the GSI balance equations. The basic gray/non-scattering medium it reduces to the form:
hypotheses adopted here are those of gray/diffuse
dI
wall and gray/non-scattering medium. The gray as- = j e I = Ib I (8)
ds
sumption is quite accurate for the wall, because of
its continuous behavior over the spectrum, while where j e and identify the emission and absorp-
it allows to significantly reduce the computational tion coefficients associated to the generic point into
time, by means of a global treatment of spectral the gas mixture, respectively.
features, when it is introduced for the medium. The RTE formal solution is given by:
The high roughness level expected for the reced-  Z w 
ing surface, on the other hand, is well in agree- Iw = I0 exp 0
ds +
ment with the diffuse wall hypothesis, since reflec- 0
Z w w (9)
tion from rough surfaces approximates the diffuse
 Z 
e 00 0
reflection regime [18]. The non-scattering nature + j exp ds ds
0 s0
of soot [19] and the absence of other solid parti-
cles suspended in the gas phase, finally, agrees and expresses that the intensity at wall coming
with a non-scattering behavior of the medium. It from a certain line of sight is due to the contribu-
is also assumed that radiation does not affect the tions from the point at the opposite side surface 0
flowfield significantly [20], because of the relative and from each point crossed within the medium.
Each contribution decays by absorption through the
medium itself, until the calculation point at wall w is
reached.
In order to find out a solution of the RTE, a
boundary condition in terms of radiative intensity at
the opposite side surface and a suitable model for
the mixture absorption coefficient are needed.
The radiative intensity at the opposite side sur-
face, under the assumption of gray/diffuse wall, has
the form:
0 T04 + 0 q0,rad
I0 = (10)

which is composed by the radiative intensity emit-
ted by the wall, according to a certain emissivity
0 , and reflected by it, in a way proportional to the
wall reflectivity 0 . Since such a boundary condi-
Figure 1: Planck-mean absorption coefficients for
tion depends on the radiative intensity reflected by
water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
the wall and, accordingly, on the incoming radiative
wall heat flux, an iterative procedure is required.
The mixture absorption coefficient is derived by A specific radiative code based on the described
means of a global model, typically used for high- model has been developed using the DTM. First,
temperature combustion mixtures under vibrational the equations of the problem have been written in
equilibrium conditions: a finite form by using a discretization of both the
Nrad solid angle, for each calculation point, and the path
length, for each ray spread out. Then, the equa-
X
=p Xj p,j (11)
j=1
tions have been integrated by means of a summa-
tion over the path length of each ray, in order to
which states that the absorption of radiative energy evaluate the relevant radiative intensity, and over
is proportional to the the number of molecules per the solid angle corresponding to each calculation
unit volume, represented by the pressure p, and to point, in order to compute the associated radiative
the weighted sum of the absorption coefficients rel- wall heat flux. The field and wall local parame-
evant to the participating species j = 1, ..., Nrad , ters needed by the code have been calculated from
which are essentially water vapor, carbon dioxide the CFD simulations, with which the DTM computa-
and carbon monoxide [19, 21]. Their molar frac- tions have been coupled. A suitable ray-tracing pro-
tion Xj are used as weights, while their absorption cedure has also been implemented into the code.
coefficients p,j , known as Planck-mean absorp- The code has been validated against exact solu-
tion coefficients, are averaged over the whole spec- tions given in [4] for an infinitely long square cav-
trum. The behavior with temperature of these co- ity of edge L, with cold/black walls, in a medium
efficients has been described up to 2500 K by [22], with constant absorption coefficient , for differ-
and up to 2800 K by [23], fitting the curves reported ent values of the optical thickness = L. For
in [19, 21]. More recently, in [24], an updated the validation, 1024 rays with a spatial integration
model for the Planck-mean absorption coefficients step of 104 L have been used. Figure 2 shows
up to 5000 K has been presented. This model, the very good agreement between the exact and
summarized in Fig. 1, has been selected for the the present DTM solutions, in terms of radiative
present work. heat flux, non-dimensionalized with the black-body
 Table 3: ORPHEE firing test average results [27].

FT Go , kg/m2 s pc , bar D, mm mm/s

r,
1 39.7 3.9 28.7 0.56
2 55.0 10.3 40.8 0.66
3 59.8 18.8 53.9 0.77
4 128.9 11.4 29.3 0.92
5 145.4 17.9 35.5 1.13
6 180.3 31.4 43.3 1.26
7 210.6 14.6 26.4 1.19
8 219.1 22.9 32.8 1.39
9 225.4 33.5 40.4 1.60

Figure 2: Comparison between exact and present

DTM solutions for = 1.
emissive power, for = 1. Similar results have
been obtained for = 0.1 and 10, with the same
discretization.
3 TEST CASE DESCRIPTION
The ORPHEE test campaign performed on a lab-
scale hybrid rocket motor designed and built at the
University of Naples Federico II, is taken as ex-
perimental benchmark [25, 26].
The test campaign includes nine different static
firing tests, whose average results are summarized
in Table 3. The time-space-averaged regression
rate has been calculated with the classical fuel
mass loss method, evaluating the port final radius
from the burned fuel mass and the average regres-
sion rate as the difference between the final and
initial port radii divided by the burning time. The
details of this well assessed data reduction proce-
dure can be found in [25, 26].
The lab-scale hybrid rocket motor under con-
sideration employs a conical axial injector with an
8 mm exit diameter that allows to provide the oxi-
dizer into the axisymmetric combustion chamber of
704 mm in length and 133 mm in diameter, consid-
ering the inner case. The fuel grain has a cylin-
drical shape with a single port geometry charac-
terized by a conical inlet. The length is 574 mm
while the initial port diameter is 20 mm except in
the inlet region, which is roughly 7% of the grain
overall length, where the diameter decreases from
the value of 50 mm at the first cross section. A
pre-chamber and a post-chamber are set up ahead
and aft of the fuel grain, respectively. The pre-
chamber is 65 mm long with an 80 mm inner diam-
eter while the post-chamber, with the same length,
has a 70 mm inner diameter. A water-cooled coni-
cal converging-diverging nozzle with 16 mm throat
diameter, an 82 mm length, and a 2.4 area ratio
is foreseen to ensures long-duration firings without
throat erosion.
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In both CFD and DTM computations, the details
of the pre and post-chamber cavities have been
omitted to allow relatively modest grid sizes and
efficient parametrical analyses. The adopted geo-
metrical simplification of constant cross section has
been found to be a fair assumption in [6].
In the CFD axisymmetric simulations a grid of
170 x 60 elements, respectively in the axial and ra-
dial directions, has been selected after a grid con-
vergence procedure. A proper grid refinement in
the injection and near-wall regions has also been
introduced in order to capture the strong recircula-
tion zone induced by the axial injectoion and the
phenomena occurring into the boundary layer. For
the DTM simulations, a discretization consisting in
256 rays for each calculation point and a step of
1 mm for each ray, has been used after perform-
ing convergence analyses for both parameters. In
addition, a wall emissivity equal to 0.85 has been
assumed as reference for HTPB according to the
surface emissivity of polymeric materials exposed
to flames that is reported in [28].
An iterative procedure which couples CFD and
DTM simulations has been implemented in order to
take into account the effect that the radiative wall
heat flux has on the fuel regression rate and thus
on the flowfield.
4.1 Role of motor parameters
on thermal radiation
The role played by chamber pressure and port di-
ameter on thermal radiation has been investigated
carrying out a parametrical analysis. A cylindrical
geometry filled by a homogeneous medium consti-
tuted by water vapor at 3000 K has been consid-
ered in this case in order to run fast DTM calcula-
tions. The pressure, used as independent variable,
assumed the values of 10, 50 and 100 bar. The
diameter, on the other hand, has been used as a
parameter with values of 0.01, 0.1 and 1 m.
The results of the parametric analysis are pre-
sented in Fig. 3 in terms of radiative wall heat flux
normalized with respect to the black body emissive
power. Since the same medium conditions have
been considered for each computation, this nor-
malized heat flux allows to make considerations not
only on the global emissivity of the medium but also
on the magnitude of thermal radiation.
The radiative wall heat flux is observed to in-
crease with both chamber pressure and port diam-
eter, exhibiting saturation when sufficiently high val-
ues are foreseen. The growth of thermal radiation
with chamber pressure and port diameter agrees
Figure 3: Role of chamber pressure and port diam-
eter on the global emissivity.
with the fact that they influence in a similar way the
number of the absorbing/emitting particles encoun-
tered by radiation along its path length, i.e. its op-
tical thickness, and hence the way the gas partici-
pates to the radiative heat exchange. It can be also
stated that, if chamber pressure or port diameter
assume high values, the gaseous medium tends to
behave like a black-body; while if small values are
considered, the gaseous medium tends to become
non-participating. When the black-body condition
is reached, the radiative wall heat flux saturates
and it does not change with a further increase in
pressure or diameter, while it is no more affected by
the presence of the gas, when the non-participating
condition is attained.
For hybrid rocket motor conditions, i.e. chamber
pressures in the range of 10-100 bar and port diam-
eters of the order of 0.1 m, an intermediate condi-
tion is found. In fact, the gaseous mixture behaves
like a participating/non-black medium, with global
emissivities ranging between 0.3 and 0.9. However,
this is just a rough estimate since the different mix-
ture composition and temperature distribution that
can be encountered in hybrid rockets can affect the
global emissivity in a non-negligible way.
4.2 Effects of thermal radiation lowed by a little reduction, due to a compensating
on the flowfield effect between flame thickening and increasing of
wall-to-flame distance. Into the nozzle the geome-
In order to discuss the effect of including thermal try changes are felt by the thermal radiation at wall
radiation on the flowfield predictions, a specific fir- which also undergoes a strong reduction due to the
ing test has been taken as reference. Looking for expansion of the flow.
an intermediate condition of both motor parame-
ters and regression rate among those reported in
Table 3, firing test 5 has been selected. Three it-
erations between CFD and DTM simulations were
needed for such firing test in order to obtain a final
converged solution.
Temperature fields and streamlines, with and
without radiation, i.e. at the beginning and the end
of the iterative procedure, are presented in Fig. 4.

Figure 5: Radiative wall heat flux.

Figure 4: Flowfields with and without radiation.

In both cases the broad recirculation region due

to the axial injection and the typical hybrid rocket
diffusion flame can be recognized. The main differ-
ence between the two flowfields, however, is repre-
sented by the flame that widens and moves away
from the wall because of the increased regression
rate observed including thermal radiation.
In Fig. 5 the computed radiative wall heat flux is
presented. Just after chamber entrance a maxi- Figure 6: Contributions to the wall heat flux.
mum due to the hot flow coming from the flame
and trapped by the vortex is found. Then the ra- In Fig. 6 the different contributions to the total
diative wall heat flux exhibits a small increase fol- wall heat flux are pointed out. The radiative contri-
bution plays a non-negligible role in the wall heat-
ing since its average value of 0.64 MW/m2 repre-
sents about 18.7% of the total wall heat flux. Such
contribution is important all along the combustion
chamber, thus significantly affecting the regression
rate, while it appears to be negligible in the nozzle,
where the peak of convection at throat is superim-
posed to the decrease of radiation.

Obviously, including the radiative wall heat flux

into the wall energy balance determines an in-
crease in the predicted regression rate and cham-
ber pressure. This is highlighted in Figs. 7 and 8
which show the convergence of the iterative pro-
cedure that couples CFD and DTM simulations.
With respect to the case without thermal radiation,
the regression rate is increased by 32% while the
chamber pressure is increased by only 10%. The
reason of the lower increase of the chamber pres-
sure with respect to that of the regression rate,
can be found in the characteristic velocity decrease
caused by the shift of the mixture ratio toward a fuel
rich condition.
Figure 7: Regression rate evolution with iterations.
Figure 8: Chamber pressure evolution with itera-
tions.
4.3 Rebuilding results and
comparison with test data
All the ORPHEE firing tests are considered in this
section in order to extend the previous considera-
tions to the whole test campaign and to understand
the ability of the numerical setup to reproduce the
experimental results. The number of iterations re-
quired to attain convergence varied between two
and four depending on the operating conditions of
each firing test.
The radiative contribution with respect to the to-
tal wall heat flux ranged from 12% in the firing test 7
to 50% in the firing test 3, which are the cases with
the lowest and the highest port diameter, respec-
tively. Such result highlights that small changes in
the port diameter can significantly influence the ex-
tent to which the thermal radiation affects the to-
tal wall heating. At the same time, for considera-
tions made in Section 4.1, it is expected that the
analogous effect caused by the chamber pressure
becomes more noticeable only when a wider inter-
val of variation, with respect to that foreseen in the
present test campaign, is envisaged.
The comparison between numerical results and
experimental data in terms of regression rate and
chamber pressure are presented in Fig. 9 and 10,
respectively. Looking at the regression rate, there
is a tendency in over-estimating the measured
value. Moving from simulations without thermal ra-
diation to the present computations including it, a
certain worsening of the prediction is found. Such
increased error could be attributed to the simplified
chemical mechanism that, neglecting the presence
of radical species, is expected to over-estimate the
whole temperature field, and hence the enhance-
ment of regression rate caused by the presence
of thermal radiation. Conversely, as regards the
chamber pressure, a very good agreement be-
tween calculated and measured values is found,
since all firing tests fall within the 20% error region
and most of the calculated values appear to closely
reproduce the measured ones. Finally, it can be Figure 10: Comparison between computed and
observed that for both regression rate and cham- measured chamber pressures.
ber pressure, the worst predictions have been ob-
tained for firing tests 3, 6 and 9 which are those with
the highest optical thickness. In fact, such cases 5 CONCLUSIONS
are characterized by the highest computed radia-
tive wall heat fluxes and, accordingly, are the most A code for radiative heat transfer predictions based
sensitive to errors made on the temperature field. on DTM has been coupled to a CFD solver, inte-
grated with GSI capabilities, after being developed
and validated against exact solutions. Such nu-
merical setup allowed to investigate the effects that
thermal radiation has on the regression rate and
the whole flowfield of hybrid rockets.
An experimental test campaign, performed on a
lab-scale motor, using GOX/HTPB as propellants,
has been numerically reproduced. On average,
three iterations between radiative and fluidynamic
simulations were needed before attaining a good
convergence.
The radiative wall heat flux has been found to
increase with both chamber pressure and port di-
ameter, exhibiting a saturation behavior. More-
over, in a preliminar fashion, for values of chamber
pressure and port diameter commonly used in hy-
brid rocket applications, the mixture is observed to
behave like a participating/non-black medium with
Figure 9: Comparison between computed and global emissivities ranging between 0.3 and 0.9.
measured regression rates. The radiative wall heat flux ranged between 12%
and 50% of the total value, strictly depending on
the port diameter envisaged by the different firing
tests. The radiative wall heat flux has been found
to be important in the combustion chamber while it
results negligible in the nozzle. In addition, a crucial
role in the determination of the local value of the
radiative wall heating has been found to be played
by the flame thickness and position with respect to
the wall surface.
The enhanced wall heat flux computed includ-
ing thermal radiation led to increased regression
rates and chamber pressures. The increasing of
chamber pressure has been found to be mitigated
with respect to that of the regression rate by the
reduction of the characteristic velocity associated
to the shift of the mixture ratio. While the com-
puted values of chamber pressure have been found
very close to those experimentally measured, a
tendency in the over-estimation of the regression
rate has been observed. The source of such error
could be attributed to the simplified chemical mech-
anism that, without taking into account the radi-
cal species, over-estimates the whole temperature
field, and hence the magnitude of thermal radiation
and its effect on the fuel regression rate.
Ongoing activities foresee the update of the CFD
solver with a more detailed chemical mechanism
and of the DTM code with the ability to compute
radiation from soot particles.
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