Heat Transfer Analysis and Structural Optimization for Spiral Channel Regenerative Cooling Thrust Chamber

Abstract

There is currently a lack of efficient heat transfer analysis methodologies for spiral channel regenerative cooling that has been increasingly applied in liquid rocket engines. To figure out the heat transfer characteristics of the spiral channel regenerative cooling thrust chamber, a simple 1D method based on the traditional semi-empirical formula after correcting the flow velocity is proposed. The accuracy of this approach is verified by the 3D numerical simulation. The verified method is further used to analyze the distribution of inner wall temperature in the test case and optimize the channel’s parameters. The research shows that the maximum inner wall temperature cooled by the spiral channel is 8.5% lower than that of the straight channel under the same channel size and boundary condition, indicating that the application of the spiral channel significantly improves the cooling effect. In addition, the 1D model combined with the second-order response surface model is employed to optimize the channel width, channel height, pitch, and inner wall thickness aiming for the best cooling effect. The calculated maximum temperature of the inner wall after the structure optimization is 586.6 K, which is 29.8% lower than the initial structure before optimization.