Definition and Evaluation of Advanced Rocket Thrust Chamber Demonstrator Concepts

Since the beginning of the German collaborative research center SFB-TRR 40 in 2008 ArianeGroup has been involved as industrial partner and supported the research activities with its expertise. For the final funding period ArianeGroup actively contributes to the SFB-TRR 40 with the self-financed project K4. Within project K4 virtual thrust chamber demonstrators have been defined that allow the application of the attained knowledge of the entire collaborative research center to state-of-the-art numerical benchmark cases. Furthermore, ArianeGroup uses these testcases to continue the development of its in-house spray combustion and performance analysis tool Rocflam3. Unique within the collaborative research center fully three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer computations have been performed for a full-scale 100 kN upper stage thrust chamber. The strong three-dimensionality of the temperature field in the structure resulting from injection element and cooling channel configuration is displayed.