Parametric analysis of heat transfer to supercritical pressure methane

Methane is an interesting propellant to be used together with oxygen in a liquid rocket engine and has the required features to be used as a coolant in a regenerative cooling sys- tem also in the case of an expander cycle engine: in this context its behavior as a coolant flow must be controlled and this is complicated by the fact that methane could be in a near critical condition in the cooling channels and thus be subjected to high thermophys- ical properties variations. The present study investigates the heat transfer to methane looking at the in fluence of the thermodynamic and transport properties variations on the methane heat transfer capabilities. In particular the heat transfer deterioration that could affect methane is deeply investigated. To carry out the necessary parametric studies a parabolized Navier Stokes solver developed by the authors has been used together with accurate equation of state and transport properties models able to describe methane in all the thermodynamic conditions of interest. © 2011 by A. Urbano and F. Nasuti