High-Pressure Flows for Propulsion Applications

High-pressure flows occur in nature, in industrial processes and in manufactured devices but not in human personal experience which is limited to atmospheric pressure. In nature, high-pressure flows are found in petroleum reservoirs, at ocean depths, and in the atmospheres of planets such as Venus. In industry, the enhanced solubility that occurs at high pressures is used to extract certain chemical species; for example, the solubility of caffeine in supercritical carbon dioxide enables production of decaffeinated coffee and tea. Manufactured devices such as diesel engines and liquid rocket engines operate at pressures well above atmospheric pressure. How mixtures of chemical species behave under high-pressure conditions is described by thermodynamics. However, because thermodynamics cannot describe flows, thermodynamics must be coupled to concepts of motion and transport in order to construct a physical description characterizing all relevant processes in high-pressure flows. The chapters in this book describe observations and modeling of high-pressure flows encountered in aeronautics and astronautics. They have been selected to present the current understanding of high-pressure flows. By editorial intent, agreement between authors on all aspects of the high-pressure field of research was not sought as it was felt that revealing where disagreement exists on specific aspects indicates where the new research opportunities are. Experimental, theoretical and numerical studies are all represented in the chapters. Fundamental investigations are presented first, followed by practical studies.

CONTENTS
Chapter 1 - Microgravity Research on Quasi-Steady and Unsteady Combustion of Fuel Droplet at High Pressures
Chapter 2 - Laboratory Experiments of High-Pressure Fluid Drops
Chapter 3 - Optical Diagnostics for Sprays at High Pressure
Chapter 4 - Supercritical Coaxial Jet Disintegration
Chapter 5 - High-Pressure Experiments Relevant to Rocket Propulsion
Chapter 6 - Forced and Unforced Shear Coaxial Mixing and Combustion at Subcritical and Supercritical Pressures
Chapter 7 - Measurement of Heat Transfer in Liquid Rocket Combustors
Chapter 8 - Characterization of Droplet Nucleation Inside Supercritical Ethylene Jets Using Small-Angle X-Ray Scattering Technique
Chapter 9 - Empirical Fundamental Equations of State for Pure Fluids and Mixtures
Chapter 10 - Molecular Simulations to Research Supercritical Fuel Properties
Chapter 11 - Large Eddy Simulations of High-pressure Jets: Effect of Subgrid-scale Modeling
Chapter 12 - High Pressure Flames with Multicomponent Transport
Chapter 13 - Large-Eddy Simulation of Cryogenic Jet Injection at Supercritical Pressures
Chapter 14 - Detailed Modeling of Supercritical Jets and Flames
Chapter 15 - Modeling and Simulations of High-Pressure Practical Flows
Chapter 16 - Large-Eddy Simulation of Liquid Injection and Combustion Processes in High-Pressure Systems
Chapter 17 - Simulation of the High-Pressure Combustion Process in Diesel Engines