Oxygen Cooling of High Pressure Hydrocarbon Rocket Engines

The objectives of this proposed effort are to develop verified models for the prediction of transpiration coolant flow requirements and the impact of transpiration cooling on the performance of a rocket engine. Hot fire test data will be aquired to verify existing transpiration cooling models or to develop new correlations that will accurately predict the flow requirements in a combustion chamber. Program Options 1 through 3 will be used to extend these models over wider ranges of applicability to encompass present and future rocket engine applications. Special test hardware will be fabricated to obtain the test data. Figure 6 shows a transpiration cooled combustion chamber that will be fabricated specifically for the purpose of obtaining the required test data. This chamber will be designed to interface with an existing 40 klbf LOX/RP-1 injector hardware developed and previously tested by NASA/MSFC. The use of this injector has a second benefit in that previous hot fire testing with a calorimeter has defined the heat flux distribution to be expected on the combustion chamber, providing a critical piece of data to the program.