Effect of Compound Injection Angle

on Liquid Film Cooling Effectiveness

contents:
1 abstract
2 Introduction
3 Experimental set up &
Measurement plan
4 Conclusion
5 References

1 Abstract
Liquid film cooling is an important method to maintain structural
integrity of rocket combustor walls. The effects of the changes of a
liquid film cooling mass flow rate and operating conditions on
wall heat flux characteristics of a liquid rocket engine combustion
chamber were investigated by experiment. The study was
conducted using a cylindrical test section, used as a thrust
chamber water as coolant and on the inner surface of the test
section containing flowing hot air. Coolant gas injections of two
different configurations, viz., tangential angle of 30o and
compound angles of 30o10o were used for the experiments. The
hot gas used at two different temperatures of 404 and 383 K with
main stream flow rates of 0.13 m3s-1 for both the temperatures
and the coolant water applied at 303 K with four different flow
rates of 2.63E-06, 2.15E-06, 1.52E-06 and 1.08E-06 m3s-1.
Initially, the observations of surface temperature of test section
were made with the help of thermocouples without applying the
coolant and then it is noted with coolant applied for four different
coolant injections. The data that are available from the
experiments is used to evaluate the film cooling length and film
cooling effectiveness. Also it is used to compare the above
evaluations for all configurations and hence to evaluate the effect
of liquid film cooling. It was found from the preliminary
experiments that the liquid film was established. And the film
cooling length is higher in the case of increasing the flow rate of
the coolant by increasing the pressure. And the effect of
compound angle injection configurations on liquid film cooling is
on.
Keywords- Liquid film cooling, Film cooling effectiveness

2 INTRODUCTION:
Rocket combustors are subjected to high heat transfer from the
flowing hot gases and typically require active cooling. High thrust
high specific impulse rocket engines, which are being developed as
the propulsion devices for heavier pay load capacity use liquid
propellants instead of solid fuel. The large values of heat fluxes at the
high pressures and temperatures will have larger implications on the
safety of the equipment, human beings and its launch pad
installations. The high heat flux cause the wall temperatures to go
beyond the melting point of the material itself leading to burn through
and explosions. Inadequate measures to manage these adverse
pressure and temperature conditions had led to significant number of
engine thrust chamber failures during the development phase of
several high thrust engines.
There are many cooling techniques applied to solve this problem in
which Regenerative cooling is the most widely used method of
cooling a thrust chamber and is accomplished by flowing highvelocity coolant over the back side of the chamber hot gas wall to
convectively cool the hot gas liner. The coolant with the heat input
from cooling the liner is then discharged into the injector and utilized
as a propellant.
Dump cooling, which is similar to regenerative cooling because the
coolant flows through small passages over the back side of the thrust
chamber wall. The difference, however, is that after cooling the thrust
chamber, the coolant is discharged overboard through openings at the
aft end of the divergent nozzle. This method has limited application
because of the performance loss resulting from dumping the coolant
overboard. To date, dump cooling has not been used in an actual
application.
Film cooling provides protection from excessive heat by introducing
a thin film of coolant or propellant through orifices around the
injector periphery or through manifolded orifices in the chamber wall
near the injector or chamber throat region. This method is typically

used in high heat flux regions and in combination with regenerative

cooling.
Transpiration cooling provides coolant (either gaseous or liquid
propellant) through a porous chamber wall at a rate sufficient to
maintain the chamber hot gas wall to the desired temperature. The
technique is really a special case of film cooling.
With ablative cooling, combustion gas-side wall material is
sacrificed by melting, vaporization and chemical changes to dissipate
heat. As a result, relatively cool gases flow over the wall surface, thus
lowering the boundary-layer temperature and assisting the cooling
process.
With radiation cooling, heat is radiated from the outer surface of the
combustion chamber or nozzle extension wall. Radiation cooling is
typically used for small thrust chambers with a high-temperature wall
material (refractory) and in low-heat flux regions, such as a nozzle
extension.
In film cooling exposed chamber wall surfaces of rocket engine
combustor are protected from excessive heat with a thin film of
coolant or propellant, which is introduced through manifold orifices
in the chamber wall near the injector. An important advantage of film
cooling is the fact that it reduces heat transfer through the walls .For
reducing the heat transfer to the wall, film cooling would be more
effective with coolant injected as a liquid rather than a gas. When the
coolant film is liquid it should essentially behave as an isothermal
heat sink, as it evaporates and diffuses in the free stream. However
this results in a two-phase flow consisting of annular liquid coolant
film and a combustion gas core. Film cooling And the coolant
injection configuration have some relation on this film cooling
effectiveness, film stability, film uniformity & film cooling length.
Most of the research in the field of film-cooling during the last
decades dealt with the determination of the film-cooling effectiveness.
Kinney et al[1] here investigated the effectiveness of liquid cooling
films on the inner surface of tubes containing flowing hot air.
Experiments were made in 2 and 4 inch diameter straight metal
tubes with air flows at temperatures from 600 to 2000o F and
diameter Reynolds numbers from 2.2 to 14 x 105; with water as the
film coolant. Visual observations of liquid film flows were made in

transparent tubes at flow conditions similar to those of the film

cooling experiments with the help of a stroboscopic light and the air
flows at temperatures of 80o and 800o F and diameter Reynolds
numbers from 4.1 to 29 x 104. Flows of water, water-detergent
solutions and aqueous ethylene glycerol solutions were investigated.
Liquid-coolant films were established and maintained around and
along the tube wall in co-current flow with the hot air. the results
indicated that, in order to film cool a given surface area with a little
coolant flow as possible, it may be necessary to limit the flow of
coolant introduced at any angle axial position and to introduce it at
several axial positions. Knuth [2] studied about the mechanism of film
cooling under the influence of high velocity, turbulent gas stream.
From that he developed correlations between pressure drops and
liquid film coolant thickness, determined temperature of laminar mass
diffusion sublayer, rate of mass addition at the boundary and predicts
rate of evaporation using axially spaced thermocouples around
circumference on the chamber wall. The coolants used are Water, (aq)
Sucros solution, (aq) Zinc Chloride solution, Carbon Tetrachloride &
Core gas was Union Oil Company No. 1 Thinner / Air
Flat plate gaseous film cooling studies with different holes
geometries are carried out by many researches [3-8] and the hole
mouth have large cross section area gives more cooling effect.
H. W. Zhang et al[6] performed a numerical study to investigate the
liquid film cooling in a rocket combustion chamber. Mass, momentum
and heat transfer characteristics through the interface are considered
in detail, and by solving the respective governing equations for the
liquid film and the gas stream couple through the interfacial matching
conditions. Heat transfer at the gas - liquid interface in a rocket
combustion chamber with insulated wall is mainly dominated by
convection of the free stream and transport of latent heat associated
with the evaporation of the liquid film. When the wall is cooled by an
external coolant, however, the sensible heat transfer become
significant, and accordingly the convective transfer increases and
latent heat flux decreases, leading to the elongation of the liquid film
length. The interfacial temperature increases quickly in the entrance

region and soon carries at the saturate temperature of the liquid film.
The wall temperature is very low in the liquid film cooling region and
increases sharply just beyond the point of the dry-out. The liquid film
length decreases with the increase of the gas stream Reynolds
number for the condition with an invariable coolant mass flux. The
liquid film length increases with the increase of the external cooling.

DEFINITION
LIQUID FILM COOLING THICKNESS

The present work deals with the effect of liquid film injection
configuration used to inject liquid coolant into cylindrical chamber. In
which ordinary water used as coolant and hot air generated from
heater which simulate the hot combustion products. The study uses,
typical combinations of the axial and tangential angles 300-100 &
axial angle 300

3.

EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND MEASUREMENT

PLAN

A schematic of experimental setup is shown in Fig.1. It consist of

three parts, (i) a hot air source with a temperature range of 300 to
800K, (ii) a test section and (iii) an exhaust system
Fig. 1. Schematic of the Experimental setup

Atmospheric air drawn in by 10kW blower and is passed through an

electric heater of 100kW, which heat up the air to a free-stream
temperature that can be set from 300 to 500 K. A flow meter which
control valve is connected in the line to control the core gas flow. The
nichrome heater coil radiatively heat up the metal tubing through
which the ambient air flow. There are a number of temperature
sensors within the furnace for the safety of the heating coil. The
temperature of the hot gas is controlled using a feedback loop with a
temperature controller. The maximum flow Reynolds number that can
be obtained is of order of 6x104. The whole of the heater assembly
and blower is controlled through a control panel. The measurement
panel board attached to the heater system works as a feedback loop to
vary the main stream temperature. K-type thermocouples are used to
measure the temperature inside the furnace. The hot air from the flow
straightner enters the test section chamber through a calming section.
The experiments are going to be done with hot air which simulate the
hot combustion products and water is used as coolant.

Fig. 2. Injector heads

The coolant injection system consist of water supply tank and
gaseous nitrogen supply cylinder for pressurising the water with
pressure regulator and coolant injection manifold. The injector is
made of two parts for easy fabrication and welded together. It consist
of an elliptical grove as reservoir and 50 orifices of 0.55mm diameter
are EDM drilled, as in Figure.2 from manifold. Injection orifices of
tangential angle 300 and compound angle of 300-100 are drilled for
coolant injection.
The test section made of rolled copper tube of 120mm inside
diameter, 2 mm thick and 770 mm long, which is instrumented with
T-type thermocouple to measure the surface temperature as well as the
free stream hot air temperature as shown in Figure.3. All
thermocouple beads are fabricated and welded to the surface using a

discharge type welder and held tightly using low conducting nylon
band. Thermocouples are attaching the circumferentially on the
surface of the test section with an equal interval of 30 mm along the
length of the test section up to the length of 480 mm. Six such row of
thermocouples are fixed circumferentially in an equal angular
displacement of 60 degree on the test section. A total of 96
thermocouples are located on the test section circumferentially and
two thermocouples are inserted into the cylinder to measure the inside
main stream hot air temperature at its centre. All thermocouple
outputs are fed to Keithley Multi-meter model 2750 capable of
measuring 120 channels

Figure 3. Copper test section

Liquid film cooling experiments were done with main stream hot
gas entry temperature of 404K and the coolant water temperature is at

303K and the flow rates corresponds to pressure 0.25,0.5,1 and 1.5
bar were investigated with tangential injection angle of 30 0 and the
liquid film was established.

Fig. 4. Wall temperature variation

When film cooling is introduced the wall temperature near to the

coolant injection decreases as film of coolant protect the wall from the
hot air. The coolant mixes with mainstream hot air in the down stream
leading to gradual temperature rise on the surface of the test
section.the measured variation along the length of the test section are
shown on the Fig.4.

Fig. 5. Wall temperature variation

From the graph it is clear that there is a decrease in wall temperature
corresponding to the increase in coolant flow rate, also there is a
slight increase in liquid film cooling length as the increase in coolant
flow rate. In all the cases the wall temperatures were found almost
constant for the initial 150mm and after that the effect of flow rate
was observed.
In Figures.6-9 shows the variation of wall temperature above and
below the horizontal axis of the test section. It shows that the film
cooling is higher in the lower part of the test section. The wall
temperature is higher in the upper part of the horizontal axis is due to
the down fall of liquid film due to the gravitational effect. On
increasing the pressure of the coolant injection (coolant flow rate) the
length of cooling effect on the upper and lower part of the horizontal
axis part also increased.
In figure 6 the larger variation on film cooling on upper and lower
portion of the horizontal axis of the test section start at 90mm on
wards. It may due to the gravitational effect on water jet and water jet
strength at that flow rate.

Fig.6.Wall temperature variation above and below of testsection

at 0.25 bar
In figure 7 the larger variation on film cooling on upper and lower
portion of the horizontal axis of the test section start at 120mm on
wards which is slight higher than 0.25 bar. It may due water jet
strength at that flow rate and that may cause to increase in film
adherence

Fig.7.Wall temperature variation above and below of testsection at

0.5 bar

In figure 8 the larger variation on film cooling on upper and lower

portion of the horizontal axis of the test section start at 150 mm on
wards which is slight higher than 0.5 bar. It may due increase in water
jet strength due increases coolant flow rate and that may cause to
increase in film adherence

Fig
.8.Wall temperature variation above and below of testsection at 1 bar
In figure 9 the larger variation on film cooling on upper and lower
portion of the horizontal axis of the test section start at 180 mm on
wards which is slight higher than 1 bar. It may due increase in water
jet strength due increases coolant flow rate and that may cause to
increase in film adherence
From this there is gradual increase in flow rate the uniformity of
liquid film on the test section on upper and lower side of the
horizontal axis increase. And the increase in flow rate also increase
the film adherence to the wall.

Fig.9.Wall temperature variation above and below of testsection at

1.5 bar

CONCLUSIONS
An experimental setup was made to study the liquid film

cooling. Detailed instrumentation for the measurement of wall

temperature are made. Experiments were conducted with core
gas at 404K and water as coolant for different coolant flow
rates by using tangential injector configuration of 300
From the preliminary measurement it shows that the liquid
film was established. There is a decrease in wall temperature
corresponding to the increase in coolant flow rate, also there
is a slight increase in liquid film cooling length as the increase
in coolant flow rate. The film cooling length were increasing
with corresponding increase in coolant water flow rate
And the film liquid film cooling on compound injection
orifice 300-100 is on

REFERENCES

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Internal Liquid Film Cooling Experiment with Air Stream
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