Dynamic Simulation and Parametric Study of a Liquid Propellant Engine

Liquid propellant rocket engines form an important part of aerospace systems. They are complicated systems and simulation task of these systems is important, because if the simulation software of LPRE is available, designers may easily optimize the engine.This paper presents application of a simulation algorithm to dynamic and nonlinear analysis of a specific liquid propellant engine. In this algorithm the mathematical model is solved by placing the implicit nonlinear algebraic equations in a set of nested Newton-Raphson loops followed by numerical integration of the differential equation using a first-order Euler technique. The simulation approach is based on following the liquids (fuel and oxidizer) in their respective paths. Comparison of the nominal values obtained from simulation with actual design values is presented. Typical simulation outputs of primary engine variables are also given. The developed simulation code based on this algorithm has the capability to be used in studying the effect of various elements and subsystem parameters on operation of the engine system. With this capability, parametric study of a liquid propellant engine is presented.