Heat transfer performance of regenerative cooling in the presence of supersonic combustion based on two-way decoupling method

• Published in: Energy (Oxford) 2024-12, Vol.312, p.133505, Article 133505
• Main Authors: Wang, Jiao, Sun, Hao, Jin, Haichuan, Gao, Hui, Wen, Dongsheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Hydrocarbon fuels; Regenerative cooling; Supersonic combustion; Thermal cracking; Two-way coupling
• ISSN: 0360-5442
• DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2024.133505

As a promising active cooling method for aero engines, regenerative cooling with endothermic hydrocarbon fuel plays an important role in thermal protection systems. However, simply assuming the thermal boundary conditions for the numerical simulation of regenerative cooling as either Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions is often unsuitable, as the combustion process exhibits complex three-dimensional (3D) characteristics. We propose a novel multi-step iterative calculation method in this work to simulate the coupled flow and heat transfer between supersonic combustion in the combustor and regenerative cooling outside. The method captures the main features of the supersonic combustion including different shockwave structures, and generates a realistic 3D distribution of heat flux as the boundary condition for the regenerative cooling study. With improved simulation, the result shows that regenerative cooling significantly reduces the peak temperature of the combustor by 58.5 % with a mass flow rate of 1 g/s. A local high-temperature region is observed on the coupled wall inside the combustor near the injector, where the flame is primarily concentrated. Increasing the mass flow rate by 100 %, from 1 g/s to 2 g/s, leads to a reduction in the maximum wall temperature by up to 15.7 %. •A decoupling method for bi-directional combustion-cooling coupling is proposed.•Coupled heat transfer performance for combustion and regenerative cooling is analyzed.•Key features of supersonic combustion process are captured and validated.•Realistic 3D heat flux distributions for regenerative cooling simulation are obtained.•The impact of mass flow rate on cooling performance and thermal cracking is evaluated.