SFGP 2007 - Pyrolysis of Supercritical Endothermic Fuel: Evaluation for Active Cooling Instrumentation

Abstract

Hypersonic flight is expected to be achieved in the coming years by use of Supersonic Combustion RAMJET (SCRAMJET). One of the main issues is the thermal management of the overall vehicle and more specifically the cooling of the engine. In order to simulate the behaviour of an actively cooled SCRAMJET by use of supercritical endothermic fuel, a one-dimensional transient numerical model has been developed with heat and mass transfer, fluid mechanics and detailed pyrolysis chemistry. A dedicated experimental test bench is now available since 2006 at the LEES laboratory of Bourges to study supercritical fuel pyrolysis under steady-state and transient conditions. It aims to provide understanding of coupled phenomena, validation data for the numerical code and evaluation of onboard and real-time measurement methods for industrial use. A brief overview of the numerical code and a presentation of the experimental bench are proposed in this paper. Experimental results are discussed and a comparison is provided between numerical and experimental data. Discrepancies are shown to be lower than a few percent in terms of molar chemical compositions. This is due to uncertainties on experimental temperature measurement and to 2-D effects, which are not taken into account by the modelling. The numerical code appears to be of great importance in accessing unmeasured data and providing new understanding of coupled phenomena. Experimental and numerical tools are proved to be efficient to test future measurement methods under extreme conditions, especially at supercritical states.