Hello, I am Alberto Soto with Siemens PLM Software.
Today, I will show how Simcenter Amesim
enables you to assess the transient behavior
of a staged combustion rocket engine
and how it helps design the associated controllers.
The main characteristic of this rocket cycle is the staged combustion.
The combustion is done in several stages,
thanks to the pre-combustion and main combustion chambers.
In this type of complex engine cycles,
the control system plays a very important role
in the effective operation of the engine.
Let’s now go to the Simcenter Amesim demo.
In the model, you can identify the oxidizer side,
highlighted in blue,
and the fuel side, highlighted in red.
You can see the 2 oxidizer turbo-pumps
and the 2 fuel turbo-pumps,
as well as a cooling jacket
or a regenerative circuit that is placed on the fuel side.
After the 2 preburners,
you can find the hot gases side
that is highlighted in yellow.
To control the transient phenomena,
several valves are included in the rocket engine.
All these valves are piloted by the controller.
Let’s take a look at the scenario and results.
The results show the startup of the engine.
The fuel and oxidizer preburners
are ignited before the main combustion chamber.
Thanks to the combustion ignition,
the preburners and main combustion chamber
can create the energy needed
to power the turbomachinery to the stabilized rotary speed.
An engineer working on this type of engine
might have the following questions:
When could the combustion chambers be ignited?
What is the proper valve opening and closing sequence
during engine start up and shut down?
How can I design the most efficient engine?
Simcenter Amesim helps you to answer these kinds of questions.
Once the physical model is built and validated,
engineers can address several challenges like
controller development.
In this example,
we will focus on the fuel preburner oxidizer valve
or FPOV.
This valve controls the amount of oxidizer
entering the fuel preburner.
This, in turn, regulates the rotational speed
and fuel flow rate of the high pressure fuel turbopump.
A two-phase control strategy has been used to obtain
a startup with an efficient engine operating point.
The FPOV is regulated by an open loop control.
Then, at 3.6 seconds,
the open loop control changes to a closed loop control
in order to improve the mixture ratio
of the main combustion chamber.
The FPOV fuel valve
has an influence on the overall performance
of the rocket engine
and this coupling can be analyzed
thanks to Simcenter Amesim.
To conclude, Simcenter Amesim allows you to better assess
the dynamic behavior of complex engines
and to design their associated control system,
ensuring a robust transient performance.
Thank you for watching.
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