• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.35 no.8
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• pp.720-725
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• 2007

Cold acoustic tests have been performed to elucidate the effect of baffle gaps on the optimal damping characteristics in a liquid rocket combustor where coaxial injectors are installed. For several axial baffle lengths, an optimal acoustic damping capacitance has been achieved in a certain gap range. Cold acoustic tests for simulating fluid viscosity by changing the pressure in a model chamber have been done to study the main mechanism of optimal damping. Experimental data have shown that the optimal gap for high damping capacity exists mainly due to the viscosity near the gap of baffles. Therefore, axial baffle length can be reduced by using the optimal baffle gap, providing a possible solution of thermal cooling problems. Also, these optimum characteristics can be some guidelines for manufacturing and assembling injectors in full-scaled rocket combustors.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.37 no.10
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• pp.1038-1047
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• 2009

The development process of a gas generator for a 30-tonf pump-fed space liquid rocket engine is described. Starting from the development of an injector, followed by subscale and full-scale test specimens, the development of LOx/kerosene fuel-rich gas generator has been concluded successfully. Various analytical methods have been utilized in the course of design and the performance requirements have been verified experimentally through ignition tests, combustion performance and stability assessment tests and duration tests. The gas generator has proven its workability and stability within a defined operation window of varying chamber pressure and mixture ratio and demonstrated compliance to the performance and life time requirements.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.275-283
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• 2013

An injector that uses methane gas ($CH_4$) and liquid oxygen ($LO_x$) as propellants was designed to verify the combustion characteristics of an engine that uses methane, which is one of the next-generation propellants. A swirl/shear coaxial-type injector was used, and flow analysis was performed using Fluent to determine the main design parameters of the injector. A hydraulic test was performed to understand the atomization and spray pattern characteristics of the injector. Next, a combustion test was performed at the design point to understand the ignition and combustion stability. Additional combustion tests were performed according to the O/F ratio to investigate the combustion characteristics and stabilities using the characteristic exhaust velocity ($C^*$) and fluctuation of the chamber pressure. The experimental results showed that the combustion efficiency was greater than 90%, and the pressure fluctuation was lower than 2% under all conditions.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.444-453
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• 2014

A throttleable rocket engine enables operational possibilities such as the docking of spacecraft, maneuvering in a certain orbit and landing on a planet's surface, altitude control, and entrance to atmosphere-less planets. Thus, throttling methods have long been researched. However, dual-manifold injectors, which represent one throttling method, have been investigated less than others. In this study, dual-manifold and single-manifold injectors were compared to determine the characteristics of dual-manifold injectors. Also, the effects of gas injection were investigated with various F/O ratios. To investigate the characteristics, mass flow rate, spray pattern, spray angle, and droplet size were measured. The spray angle and droplet size were captured by indirect photography. About 30 images were taken to assess the spray patterns and spray angle. Also, 700 images were analyzed to understand the droplet distribution and targeting area, moving to the right from the centerline with 1.11-cm intervals. The droplet size was obtained from an image processing procedure. From the results, the spray angle showed two transition regions, due to swirl momentum in the swirl chamber regardless of the F/O ratio. The droplet size showed similar trends in both dual-manifold and single-manifold injectors except in the low mass flow rate region. In the case of the dual- manifold injector, the spray cone was not fully developed in the low mass flow rate region due to low angular momentum in the swirl chamber.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.135-140
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• 2006

In the experimental study of $N_2$ purge cold flow test of impinging(FOOF) injector for determining of instability region, the whistling sound which has a specific frequency is generated. The frequency of whistling is proportional to the gas flow velocity in part of the oxidizer orifice and due to the coupling of the vibrating gas column and the natural frequency of pipe-orifice shape, the discontinuous jumping phenomena arises. The whistling phenomena have no effect on the combustion instability. Compared the damping factor of 1T1L mode with the hot fire test, the instability region of $N_2$ purge cold flow test is very much like that. It means that flow instability by impinging or mixing of jet is the main reason of combustion instability of impinging injector(FOOF) in the hot firing test.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.395-402
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• 2010

Baffle injectors are protruded into the combustion chamber and form an anti-pulsating baffle to prevent high-frequency combustion instabilities in transverse modes. Being exposed to a high heat-flux environment, the baffle injector has self-cooling passages through which kerosene is convected and heated. The baffle injector with 20 spiral cooling channels has been developed and successfully applied to 30 $ton_f$-class combustors without any performance loss due to an additional cooling. In this work, numerical analysis of conjugate heat transfer in baffle injectors with various cooling channel designs has been performed in order to reduce the fabrication cost which would be considerably increased for the 75 $ton_f$-class combustor. Prior to the application to a full-scale combustor, the thermal durability of the modified design has been verified through the subscale hot-firing tests.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.28-38
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• 2019

To investigate the relation between flame structure and combustion dynamic characteristics in bi-swirl coaxial injectors for a liquid rocket engine, combustion experiments were performed using gaseous methane and gaseous oxygen. CH* radicals and pressure fluctuations were simultaneously measured by changing the injector geometries such as recess length/orifice diameter and the flow conditions such as equivalence ratio/oxidizer mass flow rate. As the injector geometries affected the velocities and mixing of the propellants, the change in flame structures was observed. From a result of the frequency analysis, it was confirmed that combustion dynamic characteristics varied according to the injector geometry/flow condition and combustion instabilities could occur under specific recess length/flow conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.24-33
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• 2020

In this study, model combustion tests were conducted to investigate the combustion instability characteristics of swirl coaxial injectors for a liquid rocket engine. To examine the effects of the combustion chamber resonant frequency and the injector mixing conditions, pressure fluctuations in the combustion chamber were measured by changing the combustion chamber length, injector recess length, and propellant mixture ratio. From the test results, the variation in the pressure fluctuations for each experimental condition was confirmed and the combustion stability was evaluated by stability mapping. It was found that the longitudinal mode and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities occurred due to the change in the combustion chamber and recess lengths.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.197-201
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• 2006

In the development process of a fuel-rich gas generator using kerosene and LOx for a 30 tonf class liquid rocket engine, a heat damage occurred at the LOx post of swirl coaxial injectors used in the gas generator and the problem has been examined. To prevent the heat damage, injectors are redesigned to have an increased recess while maintaining internal mixing, which minimizes recirculation region to prevent anchoring of the flame in the recirculation region. The combustion test results of the sub-scale gas generator showed that this scheme can prevent heat damage of the LOx post in the swirl coaxial injectors of the fuel-rich gas generator.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.55-63
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• 2012

The turbulent flow characteristics in a coaxial injector were investigated by the nonlinear $k-{\varepsilon}-f_{\mu}$ model of Park et al.[1] and large eddy simulation (LES). In order to analyze the geometric effects on the scalar mixing for nonreacting variable-density flows, several recessed lengths and momentum flux ratios are selected at a constant Reynolds number. The nonlinear $k-{\varepsilon}-f_{\mu}$�� model proposed the meaningful characteristics for various momentum flux ratios and recess lengths. The LES results showed the changes of small-scale structures by the recess. When the inner jet was recessed, the development of turbulent kinetic energy became faster than that of non-recessed case. Also, the mixing characteristics were mainly influenced by the variation of shear rates, but the local mixing was changed by the adoption of recess.