Numerical simulation of liquid propellant rocket engines

The development of liquid propellant rocket engines requires tests and dynamical simulations of all its elements in a computer environment. With the advances of the numerical methodologies, particularly of the implicit schemes, the solution of flow problems which require real gas modeling became also feasible by the end of last century. Many research activities are devoted to the numerical simulation of combustion and particularly to flame modeling, being quite important for the development of low emission rocket engines. We present the first results of our developed code that simulates a liquid propellant engine. The code was developed in a modular structure, simulating structural elements such as the combustion chamber, injector, nozzle supersonic, valves and piping and pumping system. Each of these elements was modeled and numerically coded in C++. The elements can be chosen in such a way that many different engine configurations can be evaluated, with different combinations of propellant and oxidant. We present results for a green propellant combination, where alcohol (ethanol) was used together with liquid oxygen and hydrogen peroxide. As a result one can appreciate the evolution of fluxes, pressures, temperatures and other important variables as a function of time.