Combustion flow field and thermal protection performance of a liquid oxygen/kerosene engine with pintle injectors

A pintle injector is a convenient method for adjusting propellant combustion and has received extensive attention in recent years. However, few studies have examined the effects of the injection direction and momentum ratio (ratio of liquid oxygen momentum to kerosene momentum) on the flow field, temperature field, and dual-belt liquid film cooling effect in the combustion chamber. This study verified a new computational fluid dynamics (CFD) engine combustion model based on a pintle injector through a hot-test experiment. A simulation was conducted using this model. With different injection directions, when the momentum ratio was increased, the trends in the combustion efficiency and chamber pressure growth were entirely opposite. For the axial kerosene and radial liquid oxygen injection direction of liquid film cooling, when the momentum ratio was 0.73–0.9, the proportion of the first ring belt liquid film flow was selected as 5–10 %, and the second ring belt liquid film flow proportion was selected as 5–7%. When the momentum ratio was less than 0.73, the liquid film flow proportions for both the first and second ring belts were selected as 5 %. When the total liquid film flow proportion was 10 %, the chamber pressure decreased by 0.2–0.3 MPa, and the combustion efficiency decreased by 8–10 %. This numerical study provides guidance for studying the combustion characteristics and cooling performance of pintle-type rocket combustion chambers.