Aerothermal Prediction of an Aeronautical Combustion Chamber Based on the Coupling of Large Eddy Simulation, Solid Conduction and Radiation Solvers

Abstract

A precise knowledge of the thermal environment is essential for gas turbines design. Combustion chamber walls in particular are subject to strong thermal constraints. It is thus essential for designers to characterize accurately the local thermal state of such devices. Today, the determination of wall temperatures is performed experimentally by complex thermocolor tests. To limit such expensive experiments and integrate the knowledge of the thermal environment earlier in the design process, efforts are currently performed to provide high fidelity numerical tools able to predict the combustion chamber walls temperature. Many coupled physical phenomena are involved: turbulent combustion, convection and mixing of hot products and cold flows, conduction in the solid parts as well as gas to gas, gas to wall and wall to wall radiative transfers. The resolution of such a multiphysics problem jointly in the fluid and the solid domains can be done numerically through the use of several dedicated numerical and algorithmic approaches. In this paper, a partitioned coupling methodology is used to investigate the solid steady state wall temperature of a helicopter combustor in take-off conditions. The methodology relies on a high fidelity Large Eddy Simulation reacting flow solver coupled to conduction and radiative solvers. Different computations are presented in order to assess the role of each heat transfer process in the temperature field. A conjugate heat transfer simulation is first proposed and compared with experimental thermocolor tests. The effect of radiation is then investigated comparing relative importance of convective and radiative heat fluxes.