Influence of Thermodynamic Properties upon Transcritical Nitrogen Injection

The influence of thermodynamic transition associated with transcritical nitrogen injection upon the flow structure was investigated to explore numerical simulation of the injectant dynamics of oxygen/hydrogen coaxial jet in liquid rocket engines. Single and coaxial nitrogen jets were treated by comparing the transcritical and perfect-gaseous conditions, wherein the numerical model was accommodative to the real-fluid thermodynamics and transport properties at supercritical pressures. The model was in the first place validated by comparing the results of transcritical nitrogen injection between calculations and available experiments. For a single jet under the transcritical condition, the nitrogen kept a relatively high density up to its pseudo-critical temperature inside the mixing layer, since it remains less expanding until heated up to its pseudo-critical temperature. Numerical analysis revealed that cryogenic jets exhibit strong dependence of specific enthalpy profile upon the associated density profile that are both dominated by turbulent thermal diffusion. In the numerical model, therefore, exact evaluation of turbulent heat fluxes becomes very important for simulating turbulent cryogenic jets under supercritical pressures. Concerning the coaxial jets due to transcritical/gaseous nitrogen injections, the density profile inside the mixing layer was again affected by the thermodynamic transition of nitrogen. However, hydrodynamic instability modes of the inner jet did not show significant differences by this thermodynamic transition, so that further study is needed for the mixing process downstream of the near injection position.