The needs of in-flight experiments for cryogenic propellant behavior : interest and status
- Paper number
IAC-10,D2,6,10,x6987
- Author
Mr. Jerome Lacapere, Air Liquide, France
- Coauthor
Mr. Sébastien Bianchi, Air Liquide, France
- Coauthor
Mr. Yves Prel, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France
- Coauthor
Dr. Benjamin Legrand, France
- Coauthor
Mr. Vincent Leudiere, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France
- Year
2010
- Abstract
Developments are performed at Air Liquide in cooperation with CNES to model with CFD tools the thermo-hydraulic behaviour of cryogenic propellants during all phases of a space launch (from tank pressurization on the pad up to the end of draining of upper stage tank, including future ballistic phases). Since 1999, a french-german program COMPERE is dedicated to scientific aspects concerning fluid behaviours in space launchers. Up to now, some benchmarks permits to better understand cryogenic liquid behaviour in tanks and to validate some aspects of numerical codes. But all the tests performed are limited in time, in geometry representativity, or by the working fluid. Concerning functional aspects of a future upper stage with re-ignition capabilities following a ballistic phase, it appears that constant settling (or periodic) with low thrust using boil-off could be a suitable technological solution to limit total liquid evaporation. Thus it appears necessary to get data in such conditions (low gravity environment) in order to get confidence in our numerical tools. The more interesting functional aspects concern pressure and temperature evolution, boil-off prediction, and evolution of hydrogen liquid mass during ballistic phases on one hand and values of needed thrust for transient phases (engine shut-off, settling before re-ignition) on the other hand. One solution could be to use actual Ariane 5 cryogenic upper-stage ESCA with additional instrumentation after payloads separation to get such data. The other solution could be to perform dedicated experiments (sounding rockets, KAP platform, small launchers, …). The ideal solution would be obviously to get data from the 2 previous solutions. The paper will present a brief history of successful and unsuccessful in-flight tests performed in the United States. In a second step, the validation status of our numerical code and the need of new data to improve the level of confidence and the TRL of the numerical tool will be discussed.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)