Abstract
A heated and expanded helium is used to pressurize liquid propellants in propellant tanks of propulsion system of liquid propellant launch vehicles. To produce a heated and expanded helium, an hot-gas heat exchanger is used by utilizing heat source from an exhausted gas, which was generated in a gas generator to operate turbine of turbo-pump and dumped out through an exhaust duct of engine. Both experimental and numerical approaches of hot-gas heat exchanger design were conducted in the present study. Experimentally, siliconites - electrical resistance types - were used to simulate the full heat condition instead of an exhausted gas. Cryogenic heat exchangers, which were immersed in a liquid nitrogen pool, were used to feed cryogenic gaseous helium in a hot-gas heat exchanger. Numerical simulation was made using commercially utilized solver - Fluent V.6.0 - to validate experimental results. Helically coiled stainless steel pipe and stainless steel exhausted duct were consisted of tetrahedron unstructured mesh. Helium was a working fluid Inside helical heat coil and regarded as an ideal gas. Realizable k-』 turbulent modeling was adopted to take turbulent mixing effects in consideration. Comparisons between experimental results and numerical solutions are Presented. It is observed that a resulted hot-gas heat exchanger design is reliable based on the comparison of both results.
