Interactions of fluid oxygen drops in fluid hydrogen at rocket chamber pressures

Abstract

A model of fluid drop behavior in clusters has been developed including the interactions induced by the drop proximity. The model is based upon the global conservation equations for the interstitial cluster region coupled to isolated fluid drop equations previously developed. Heat and mass transfer to the cluster are modeled using the Nusselt number concept. Results from calculations for the LO_x–H_2 system show the predictions to be insensitive to the value of the Nusselt number over three orders of magnitude. The results also show that at fixed pressure, increased drop proximity induces increased accumulation of LO_x in the interstitial space inside the cluster. At fixed initial drop proximity, the gradients of the dependent variables become increasingly smeared as the pressure increases; an opposite result from that obtained for isolated drops (Harstad K, Bellan J. Isolated fluid oxygen drop behavior in fluid hydrogen at rocket chamber pressure. Int J Heat Mass Transfer 1998; 41:3537–50). It is thus inferred that clusters of drops might be a desirable aspect in supercritical combustion because they aid interdiffusion of the reactive components.

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