ROCKET THRUST CHAMBER

COOLING
Presented by,
A.Sundaramahalingam
950011414015
M.E. Thermal II yr
COMBUSTION CHAMBER AND NOZZLE
• The combustion chamber is that part of a thrust
chamber where the combustion or burning of
the propellant takes place.
• The combustion temperature is much higher
than the melting points of most chamber wall
materials.
• So it is necessary either to cool the walls or to
stop rocket operation before the critical wall
areas becoming too hot.
HEAT TRANSFER DISTRIBUTION
• Heat is transmitted to all internal surface exposed to
hot gases, namely the injector face, the chamber &
nozzle walls.
• The heat transfer rate, that is, the local wall
temperatures & heat transfer per unit area, varies
within the rocket.
• The amount of heat transferred by conduction
from the chamber gas to the walls in a rocket
thrust chamber is negligible. By far the largest part
of the heat is transferred by means of convection.
A part (usually 5 to 35%) of the transferred heat
is attributable to radiation.
Typical axial heat transfer rate distribution for liquid propellant
thrust chambers and solid propellant rocket motors. The peak is
always at the nozzle throat and the lowest value is usually near
the nozzle exit
 Cooling of Thrust Chambers

• The primary objective of cooling is to prevent the

chamber and nozzle walls from becoming too hot, so they
will no longer be able to withstand the imposed loads or
stresses, thus causing the chamber or nozzle to fail. Most
wall materials lose strength and become weaker as
temperature is increased.
 Cooling of thrust chamber

Steady state Heat transfer Transient Heat transfer

1.Steady state cooling
• The heat transfer rate and the temperatures of the
chambers reach thermal equilibrium. This includes
regenerative cooling and radiation cooling.
• (i) Regenerative cooling is done by building a cooling
jacket around the thrust chamber and circulating one of the
liquid propellants (usually the fuel) through it before it is
fed to the injector. This cooling technique is used
primarily with bipropellant chambers of medium to large
thrust. It has been effective in applications with high
chamber pressure and high heat transfer rates. Also, most
injectors use regenerative cooling.
• In “radiation cooling” the chamber and/or nozzle have
only a single wall made of high temperature material.
When it reaches thermal equilibrium, this wall usually
glows red or white hot and radiates heat away to the
surroundings or to empty space.

• Radiation cooling is used with monopropellant thrust

chambers, bipropellant and monopropellant gas generators,
and for diverging nozzle exhaust sections beyond an area
ratio of about 6 to 10. A few small bipropellant thrusters
are also radiation cooled. This cooling scheme has worked
well with lower chamber pressures (less than 250 psi)
and moderate heat transfer rates.
2.Transient cooling
• The thrust chamber does not reach a thermal equilibrium,
and temperatures continue to increase with operating
duration. The heat absorbing capacity of the hardware
determines its maximum duration. The rocket combustion
operation has to be stopped just before any of the exposed
walls reaches a critical temperature at which it could fail.
This method has mostly been used with low chamber
pressures and low heat transfer rates.
• (i) Film cooling: This is an auxiliary method applied to
chambers and/or nozzles, augmenting either a marginal
steady-state or a transient cooling method. It can be applied
to a complete thrust chamber or just to nozzle. Film cooling is
a method of cooling whereby a relatively cool thin fluid film
covers and protects exposed wall surfaces from excessive heat
transfer.
• The thin film is introduced by injecting small quantities of fuel
or an inlet fluid at very low velocity through a large number of
orifices along the exposed surfaces in such a manner that a
protective relatively cool gas film is formed.
• A coolant with a high heat of vaporization and a high boiling
point is particularly desirable.
• (ii) A special type of film cooling, sweat cooling or
transpiration cooling, uses a porous wall material which
admits a coolant through pores uniformly over the
surface. This technique has been successfully used to cool
injector faces in the upper stage engine (J-2) of the moon
launch vehicle and the Space Shuttle main engine (SSME)
with hydrogen fuel.
(iii) Ablative cooling
• They are usually a composite material of high temperature organic or
inorganic high strength fibers, namely high silica glass, aramids
(Kevlar), or carbon fibers, impregnated with organic plastic materials
such as phenolic or epoxy resin. The fibers may be individual strands or
bands or come as a woven cloth or ribbon, all impregnated with resin .

• The ablation process is a combination of surface melting,

sublimation, charring, evaporation, decomposition in depth,
and film cooling. As shown in fig. progressive layers of the
ablative material undergo an endothermic degradation, that is,
physical and chemical changes that absorb heat. While some of
the ablative material evaporates (and some types also have a
viscous liquid phase), enough charred and porous solid material
remains on the surface to preserve the basic geometry and
surface integrity.