Modeling and Simulation of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engine Transient Performance Using Modelica

Abstract

This paper presents a liquid propellant rocket engine (LPRE) model library in Modelica language, which contains component models such as pipes, valves, tanks, turbo-pumps, combustion chambers, nozzles, injectors, gas generators, etc. These component models can be applied to establish a variety of liquid rocket engine systems with the capability of predicting engine transient performance during the startup, shutdown and regulation processes. Typical gas-pressurized liquid propellant engine system and turbo-pump liquid propellant engine system are modeled in the paper. Some simulations and analyses are performed to validate the models qualitatively. All the modeling and simulations are implemented in MWorks (Zhou, 2006), which is a modeling and simulation platform that fully supports Modelica.