Flow frictional resistance characteristics of kerosene RP-3 in horizontal circular tube at supercritical pressure

[Display omitted] . ► The fuel frictional resistance was precisely measured at the supercritical region. ► The pressure drop shows a significant acceleration at the critical temperature. ► The fuel thermal property variation leads to friction factor increase near the Tpc. ► We proposed a friction factor correlation for sub- and super-critical RP-3. The flow frictional resistance characteristics of kerosene RP-3 have been experimentally investigated in the horizontal circular tube that is isothermal and has the inner diameter of 1.78mm at supercritical pressures. Both frictional pressure drop and friction factor of RP-3 were investigated under the pressures of 3–6MPa, temperatures from 329K to 810K and mass flow rates from 2g/s (803.71kg/m2s) to 4g/s (1607.4kg/m2s). The results demonstrate that the operating pressure, mass flow rate and fluid temperature have considerable effects on the fluid flow frictional resistance. The frictional pressure drop increases with the mass flow rate, and also increases significantly with the promoting temperature of RP-3 in the critical region. At relatively low operating pressure in the decreasing process, the friction factor presents a prominent peak, near the pseudo-critical temperature, with the increasing fluid temperature. Both the frictional pressure drop and friction factor variation decrease with increasing operating pressure in the critical and pseudo-critical regions. Based on a large amount of experimental data, we have proposed a new friction factor correlation that fits the sub- and super-critical kerosene RP-3 studied in this work, and the correlation shows much less deviation of friction factor than previous models.