Recent Experimental Efforts on High-Pressure Supercritical Injection for Liquid Rockets and Their Implications

Abstract

Pressure and temperature of the liquid rocket thrust chambers into which propellants are injected have been in an ascending trajectory to gain higher specific impulse. It is quite possible then that the thermodynamic condition into which liquid propellants are injected reaches or surpasses the critical point of one or more of the injected fluids. For example, in cryogenic hydrogen/oxygen liquid rocket engines, such as Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) or Vulcain (Ariane 5), the injected liquid oxygen finds itself in a supercritical condition. Very little detailed information was available on the behavior of liquid jets under such a harsh environment nearly two decades ago. The author had the opportunity to be intimately involved in the evolutionary understanding of injection processes at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), spanning sub- to supercritical conditions during this period. The information included here attempts to present a coherent summary of experimental achievements pertinent to liquid rockets, focusing only on the injection of nonreacting cryogenic liquids into a high-pressure environment surpassing the critical point of at least one of the propellants. Moreover, some implications of the results acquired under such an environment are offered in the context of the liquid rocket combustion instability problem.