Thermal Analysis of Scramjet Combustor Panel with Active Cooling Using Cellular Materials

Long endurance hypersonic air-breathing vehicles experience very high temperatures owing to the generation of shock waves and viscous dissipation. Extreme heat flux is experienced by the scramjet combustor due to exothermic combustion and requires mechanisms for passive and/or active heat dissipation in order to sustain the flight duration. Regenerative active cooling of the scramjet combustor using endothermic hydrocarbon fuel is being widely pursued around the globe as a key approach to this end. Moreover, with the emerging multifunctional cellular materials, it is possible to design the structure which acts as a load bearing member as well as aid in cooling the airframe, with the additional advantage of reduced mass. With this perspective, a one-dimensional analytical heat transfer model has been developed to study the cooling performance of an actively cooled representative scramjet combustor panel using cellular materials. Hot-gas wall temperature of ~1465K is estimated for a flight condition of Mach 7 with active cooling for a coolant mass flow rate of 0.0195 kg/s. Additionally, parametric studies involving mass flow rate, channel dimensions and flight Mach number have also been studied.