Investigation of Afterburning Effects on the Thermal Environment of Methane Rocket at Different Altitudes

In order to study the effect of afterburning on the thermal environment of methane engine exhaust flame, a computational model of rocket plume flow field including methane engine afterburning reaction is established based on the three-dimensional compressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations and the realizable k-ε turbulence model. On this basis, reaction and frozen flows of methane rocket engine at different flight heights are investigated. The temperature distribution contour, Mach number contour and molar content contour of components corresponding to the afterburning flow field and freezing flow field at different altitudes are calculated, and the effects of afterburning on the heat flux of methane rocket are analyzed. The result provides a theoretical basis for the thermal protection design of multi nozzle methane rockets.