Numerical Investigation of Reacting Flow in a Methane Rocket Combustor: Turbulence Modeling

A comparison of the numerical predictions of several groups modeling the reacting flow inside a gaseous methane/gaseous oxygen single-element rocket combustion chamber is conducted. The focus is placed on turbulence quantities and their influence on the computed mean fields. However, the subject of this paper is not a pure study of turbulence model variation, but it aims at showing its effect within the framework of different overall setups. These comprise differences in combustion models as well as codes used. Several Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes approaches incorporating the Boussinesq approximation for the modeling of Reynolds stresses are considered. Turbulent heat and mass transfer are modeled via turbulent Prandtl and Schmidt numbers. Characteristic tendencies of the turbulence models are observed across the different codes and combustion models. Furthermore, the relevance of turbulence modeling parameters depends on the combustion modeling approach. An influence of the code used is found as well.