PREDICTION OF PRESSURE DROP THROUGH BAFFLE INJECTOR

The baffle injector in a liquid rocket engine has two special objectives. One is to atomize effectively propellants and the other is to prevent combustion instabilities. A novel analytical method predicting a fuel-side pressure drop through a baffle injector has been suggested. In order to prove the accuracy of the proposed analytical method, three baffle injector models with different hole diameters and cooling channels were manufactured. At the same pressure drop, cold-flow tests using tap water have been carried out for measuring mass flow rates and calculating discharge coefficients. The discharge coefficients measured by the cold-flow tests have been compared with those calculated by the proposed analytical method. It is found that the analytical method can estimate the discharge coefficients within 1% error.