Convective and radiative contributions to wall heat transfer in liquid rocket Engine thrust chambers

The paper is intended to evaluate the relative weight of convective and radiative wall heat transfer in LRE thrust chambers. In particular, an appropriate computational tool, based on the Discrete Transfer Method, is set up to evaluate the radiative heat flux at the wall. Numerical results are compared against experimental data from the literature, concerning subscale thrust chambers fed with either oxygen/hydrogen or oxygen/methane. Then, the effect of varying the chamber pressure or the wall temperature are investigated via a parametric analysis. Results indicate a contribution of radiation around 15% of the total wall heat flux for oxygen/methane, and around 10% for oxygen/hydrogen. An extension to account for sooting, and its associated thermal radiation, is underway. © 2015, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.