Heat Transfer Analysis for Endothermic Reacting Fluids

Endothermic fuels are known as a probable fuel for hypersonic atmospheric flight vehicles and advanced propulsion systems, as well as cryogenic fuels. Especially, from the standpoint of the advanced regenerative cooling use, they are quite useful as a coolant fuel because of their large heat sink due to their chemical decompositions; so-called endothermic cooling effect. However, no heat transfer equations have been proposed taking into account such endothermic reactive behaviors concretely. This paper describes an analytical method for evaluation of the heat transfer rates between endothermic reacting coolant fuel and coolant-side wall in the regenerative cooling passages. Heat transfer mechanism is indicated based on a classical transport-phenomenological approach. A new relational expression of Nusselt number ratio for forcedconvective heat transfer with such endothermic reactions is also proposed by theoretical approaches using some classical hypotheses. Its applicability is assessed provisionally by comparison with confirmed results of heated tube tests for supercritical JP-7 fuel carried out at NASA Lewis Research Center, using its heat sink characteristics evaluated by United Technologies Research Center(UTRC). As a result, it has been suggested that the proposed relational equation is applicable to the evaluation of enhancement of Nusselt numbers due to such reactions in developed turbulent flows such as in the regenerative cooling passages.