Cryogenic Propellant Tank Pressurization
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Cryogenic propellant tank pressurization Practical investigation on the tank collapse factor for small, high-pressure, cryogenic rocket propellant tanks R.J.G. Hermsen Master thesis report Faculty of Aerospace Engineering Department of Space Engineering Cryogenic propellant tank pressurization Practical investigation on the tank collapse factor for small, high-pressure, cryogenic rocket propellant tanks by R.J.G. Hermsen to obtain the degree of Master of Science at the Delft University of Technology, to be defended publicly on the 29th of June, 2017 at 9:00. Student number: 4016165 Project duration: April 4, 2016 – May 11, 2017 Thesis committee: Prof. Dr. E.K.A. Gill, TU Delft, chair Ir. B.T.C. Zandbergen, TU Delft, supervisor Ir. R. Noomen, TU Delft ii “Capabilities drive requirements, regardless of what the systems engineering textbooks say.” — Akin’s laws of spacecraft design, number 38 “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” — Blaise Pascal Acknowledgements It has been a pleasure to conduct the research described in this thesis at the TU Delft. The freedom of choice in subject has made it possible to select a project and a course of action that I enjoyed very much. It was fantastic, although sometimes very hard, to combine some theoretical work with a large practical project. I am happy that I was able to structure my thesis in this way, as I am of the opinion that every TU Delft student should get more in contact with the practical side of engineering. It’s good to now and then sit down, read books, do simulations and write papers, but as an engineer you also need to go out and build stuff. I first of all need to thank my supervisor, Barry Zandbergen, who has overall been a large support during this thesis. His advice, critical questions, and extensive feedback have very much improved the quality of the work done. Also his persistence has led to numerous improvements on the final report and to the completion of the paper about this research, to be presented at EUCASS 2017. Furthermore I am extremely grateful for the existence of the organization Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE). The society offers the chance for personal and intellectual development. The knowledge gained there is both theoretical and practical. It teaches not only on technical aspects, but also on social and organizational points. Through the creative and inspiring environment that DARE has offered me for my time at the university, I have been able to develop myself on all fronts. I would not be the person I am now without the society DARE and its members. For this thesis specifically DARE has assisted on many fronts. The society made it possible to construct the full test setup, to conduct all the tests required to make the setup work, and to conduct all the tests to validate the simulation. From the people in the society, a number can be mentioned in particular. These are Felix Lindemann, Angelos Karagiannis and Martin Olde as safety officers, Jeroen Wink and Bastiaan Bom for hardware acquisition, Radu Florea for his extensive help with setting up the capacitive sensor measurement and with the cRIO and LabView code in general, and the Cryogenics project members (Akhil, Andrea, Arthur, Daniel, Dion, Eoghan, Joshua, Jorgis, Juan, Krijn, Mathijs, Nick, Rano, Rolf, Simon and Tobias). Also a big thank you should go out to two TU Delft staff members who helped out tremendously during the practical side of the thesis: Kees, from the Dreamhall, for all the production tips and assis- tance, and Michel van den Brink from the Process & Energy department for his assistance during the tests. Finally I want to thank my girlfriend, for having patience with me while I spent so much of my time working on DARE and on this project. I want to thank my parents and my brother for their continuous support. (They must by now have been very much wondering why this graduating was taking so long.) R.J.G. Hermsen Delft, June 2016 iii Summary Delft University of Technology, and its student project Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE) in particular, are interested in simple, low-cost options to explore space. DARE is working towards becoming the first student society worldwide that reaches the edge of space (100 km). For this it will likely need to use liquid oxygen as an oxidizer, but it also needs to rely on pressure-fed systems, as it has not yet developed propellant pumps. Due to the cryogenic temperatures of the liquid oxygen (∼180∘C ), the pressurant gas (helium) that is injected into the tank for pressurization cools down significantly, which means more gas is needed to maintain the pressure. The effect of heat transfer on the amount of helium required is not well known, but is very important for small-scale, high-pressure tanks. To make an effect design of a rocket it needs to be known how much helium is required. This thesis has as goal to investigate this theoretically and by means of practical tests. Next to establishing the amount of gas needed, it is beneficial to investigate how the amount required can be reduced. To this purpose different injection methods are investigated during the tests: Radial, axial and vortex. It is hypothesised that axial injection may be more efficient than the commonly used radial injection. The effect of the heat transfer (and other non-ideal effects) on the amount of pressurant gas required is characterized by the so called “collapse factor”. This factor has a value between 1.0 and 2.0 when taken from literature. The large uncertainty in this factor means that an engineer needs to take a design safety margin of over 10% on its rocket mass, and over 15% on the rocket length. Reducing the uncertainty in this parameter has as effect that a far more efficient design can be created. To reduce this uncertainty a set of models is created, with the goal to develop a tool that is simple, easy to use, and computationally inexpensive, that can predict the pressurant gas collapse factor within 10%. Models are constructed as a lumped parameter model, or as an extended 1D model, where ullage volume is divided into horizontal or vertical slices. During the development it is found that the heat transfer cannot be well predicted by means of existing correlations due to the extreme temperatures and pressures in the tank. It is realized that radial injection reinforces the natural convection pattern in the tank, likely increasing heat transfer. Axial injection destroys this convective pattern and thus has likely less heat transfer. For the conduction of the experiments a 30 L cryogenic propellant tank, with associated feed system, is designed and constructed. The tank is suspended in a test bench and equipped with a large amount of sensors, including 16 thermocouples and a custom designed and made capacitive liquid level sensor. During the tests the tank is filled with liquid nitrogen. This is then pressurized with helium up to ∼30 bar of pressure for 60 s. This is followed by 50 s of pressurized expulsion of the liquid nitrogen where all thermodynamic processes in the tank are monitored. From the tests it is learned that for radial injection the collapse factor is around 15% higher than for axial injection. This is due to the different temperature distributions in the ullage gas. The mea- surements show stronger vertical temperature gradients for the radial tests. This results in high heat transfer because the relatively high temperature gas comes in contact with the tank wall. For axial tests the vertical gradient is lower and the radial gradient is far greater, resulting in colder gas near the wall, and thus lower heat transfer. The tests with the vortex tube injection were unfortunately not successful. The comparison of the test data and the simulation shows that it is possible to predict the tank collapse factor within 10% accuracy for the axial injection tests. The simulation consistently under-predicts the tank collapse factor, indicating that the heat transfer is likely underestimated in the simulation. The more accurate prediction from the simulation can be used to reduce the uncertainties due to collapse factor in total rocket mass from 10% to below 2.5%, and in total rocket length from 15% to below 4%. v Contents 1 Rocket engine tank pressurization 1 1.1 DARE: Students reaching to space . 1 1.2 The problem of tank pressurization . 2 1.2.1 Tank pressurization in literature . 2 1.2.2 Pressurant injection methods . 4 1.3 Research goal and research question. 6 1.4 Research plan . 6 1.5 Report structure . 7 2 System sizing for a liquid oxygen sounding rocket 9 2.1 Design evaluation script . 9 2.2 Design restrictions and assumptions . 11 2.2.1 Stratos II+ . 11 2.2.2 Design restrictions . 11 2.2.3 Parameter values. 12 2.3 Rocket design options . 14 2.4 Conclusions and recommendations . 18 3 Numerical simulations 19 3.1 Lumped parameter and 1D models . 20 3.1.1 Lumped parameter model . 20 3.1.2 Elaboration into 1D . 23 3.1.3 Modelling of sections, components, and materials . 25 3.2 Heat and mass transfer assumptions . 29 3.2.1 Heat transfer . 29 3.2.2 Mass transfer . 31 3.3 Verification . 32 3.3.1 Sections, components and materials verification . 32 3.3.2 Full model verification . 33 3.4 Model outputs and comparison between models . 35 3.4.1 Simulation cases and parameters . 36 3.4.2 Simulation results. 36 3.5 Sensitivity analysis .