CFD analysis of water cooled flame deflector in rocket engine test facility

Abstract

The flame deflector of a rocket engine test facility needs to be protected from the high thermal loads resulting from the impingement of high velocity and high temperature exhaust flame on it during the hot test. The flame deflector is cooled by water injected from holes in the deflector plate. In this paper ANSYS Fluent was used to analyze the flow over the flame deflector. The engine plume structure and its impingement characteristics on the flame deflector were determined in the absence and presence of water injection. The water injection pattern was optimized for the better cooling of the deflector plate. SST k-ω model was used for the turbulence modelling. Discrete Phase Model was used to simulate water injection from holes provided in the impingement plate.