3D Numerical simulation of gel simulant flow in a pressure swirl injector based on power-law model

Gel propellants are promising in the aerospace industry due to the benefits of both solid and liquid propellants. Unlike their base liquid propellants, the gel propellants have a non-Newtonian behavior that complicates their behavior in the propulsion system, especially in the atomization process. In this paper, the internal flow of a pressurized swirl injector for gel propulsion was studied using computational fluid dynamics based on the power law model. The simulations were performed in 3D mode and based on the volume of fluid model (VOF) in different values of the consistency and flow index of the fluid behavior at a constant inlet flow rate. The results showed that by increasing the value of fluid flow behavior index (n), the required pressure decreases for a same mass flow rate. The required pressures of the fluid flow of 0.063 kg /s were obtained as 1.8 and 0.45 MP for n = 0.2 and n = 0.6 respectively. The results also showed that increasing the consistency index, in terms of flow pattern, has the greatest impact on the injector swirl chamber so that the length of the air core formed along the injector axis decreases with increasing the conformity index.