Numerical Simulation of Combustion Enhanced Mixing Gaseous Oxidizer Hybrid Rocket Engine

Abstract

Summary: Hybrid rocket engines incorporate propellants in two different phases. The main shortcomings of hybrid rocket motors is their poor propellants mixing and limited fuel regression rate. This work has two main objectives, the first is to establish and validate numerical simulation models capable of predicting the performance of hybrid rocket motors. The second is to propose approaches to enhance propellants mixing and regression rate. Finally, the overall motor performance, and the effectiveness of these approaches is evaluated. The diaphragm mixing enhancement approach proved to yield better performance relative to basic default configuration without enhancements, but the performance of the swirling oxidizer configuration is found to be superior to both cases. Ansys Fluent finite volume CFD solver was used for simulation, multiple RANS based turbulence models were tested, k-epsilon standard was eventually selected. Multi-species analysis involving propellants was made. Eddy dissipation models was used for combustion modeling.