Analysis of Liquid - Fuel Vortex

  For a long time, many efforts have been taken on improving gas turbine performance to increase the propulsive force and keep the chamber walls cool. In this regard, implementation of cyclonic and vortex engines have been proposed. According to increasing in the engine efficiency and keeping the chamber walls cool, the bidirectional vortex flow which is exited in the vortex engine, makes researchers more interested in it. In the vortex engine, due to its specific geometry, two vortex layers are established. The combustion occurs in the inner vortex layer, while the outer layer protects the walls from excessive heat transfer. The vortex engine with gas fuel and oxidizer has been manufactured in laboratory scale at Virginia Institute of Technology and it is under investigation. Practical usage of the vortex engine, with both liquid and solid fuels, has its own significance. Investigation and analysis of the flow field in such a chamber have been conducted in different research centers during last five years. The significant results of these studies are the analytical and numerical solution of the flow field by applying many simplifying assumptions. Selecting proper materials, determining the engine dimensions, designing injector plate, and some other parameters in engine manufacturing process require the flow field to be modeled in the combustion chamber which needs the governing equations to be solved. For investigating of the flow field in the vortex engine, the mass conservation, momentum conservation, and energy equations have to be solved. If the flow is turbulent, the equations become more complicated and many assumptions are needed to simplify the problem. Note that, by assuming the flow to be incompressible, the energy equation becomes segregated from the other equations. At the first stage, the goal of this project is to investigate the previous analytical solution and modify it to become compatible with other numerical and experimental results, provide numerical solution of the governing equations with the least possible assumptions, and compare the obtained numerical and analytical results with each other. Since the governing equations are non-linear and the flow is turbulent, it is impossible to solve the problem analytically in details. The flow will be simulated with respect to the result of numerical solution and applying the conventional methods and the results will be presented. It is to be noted that, if the fuel is liquid, modeling the spray combustion in a two-phase (gas-liquid) flow field is required, which will be described in this project as well. According to the flow field analysis, the propulsive and aero-dynamical results of the engine will be available, which are required to determine the designation parameters and manufacturing of the vortex engine test rig. Afterwards, by establishing the fundamental requirements for installing the appropriate test rig for the vortex engine, manufacturing of this test rig with its accessories will be described in details. The obtained results of this project, including the flow field investigation, test rig designation and implementation, are the first steps to achieve mass production of the vortex engine with both liquid and gas fuels which, according to its innovation and efficiency, has its own significance.