Rocket Combustion Properties for Coaxial Injectors Operated at Elevated Pressures

A new facility has been built at the University of Michigan to study shear coaxial combusting gas-gas injection in a rocket combustion chamber. This facility, capable of chamber pressures of 10 atmospheres, is used to obtain a better understanding of the complex fluid dynamics and combustion processes found in rocket combustion chambers and to provide data to assess NASA’s computational fluid dynamics codes. Visual flame images obtained at chamber pressures of 1 and 7.5 atmospheres are presented here. From these images visual flame lengths are calculated. The observed trends are consistent with pervious work in turbulent variable density shear layers.