Effect of Vortex Flow on Heat Transfer to Combustion Chamber Wall

Abstract

A new experimental facility was designed, fabricated, and tested to model and study the effect of bidirectional swirl flow on the rate of heat transfer to combustion chamber walls. Reduction of this heat transfer can result in time and cost of design and fabrication methods of combustion chambers. The experimental study was performed using propane and air with oxygen as fuel and oxidizer, respectively. For similar flow rates, in cases where bidirectional flow was present, wall temperature reductions of up to 70% were observed. In cases where only some of the oxidizer was injected from the chamber end to generate the bidirectional swirl flow, the lowest wall temperature existed. This can be due to better mixing of fuel and oxidizer and absence of hot spots in the combustion core.