Simulating the PSU Hydrogen-Oxygen Research Combustor With CONVERGE
CFD can help engineers improve the rocket injector design process by providing analysis of key performance and thermal parameters. In this video, we simulated the Penn State University (PSU) single-element hydrogen-oxygen research combustor, operating under conditions representative of the main combustion chamber of a liquid rocket engine. We employed CONVERGE’s SAGE detailed chemistry solver, large eddy simulation (LES) turbulence modeling, and Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) to accurately capture the diffusion and combustion of hydrogen under these turbulent, supersonic conditions.
The first view in the video (0:07) shows the combustor geometry and a realistic rendering of the flame. In the second view (0:16), the realistic flame rendering is shown on the top, and a horizontal slice at the midplane (colored by temperature) is shown on the bottom. A zoomed-in view of the slice at the post-tip with the mesh overlaid is shown in the middle; you can see how the temperature-based AMR dynamically adjusts the mesh to help achieve a computationally efficient solution. In the third view (0:28), the slice is colored by velocity, and a graph of the chamber pressure over time is displayed in the center.
Convergent Science's CONVERGE is an innovative computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software that eliminates the grid generation bottleneck from the simulation process through autonomous meshing.
