LAUSR

Abstract Common fuel-oxidizer combinations in orbital manoeuvring systems consist of toxic substances but will be replaced in the future. Liquid oxygen (LOX) is one potential oxidizer but it rapidly superheats under the initial low-pressure conditions in the combustion chamber. Bubble nucleation and growth dominate the efficient disintegration of the liquid jet, which is called flash boiling. An investigation of the small scale bubble dynamics will help to improve existing models for the break-up of the LOX jet and the mixing with the fuel. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) can be used to analyse the underlying processes if the solver handles phase transition effects at extreme ambient conditions. In this paper we use a fully compressible discontinuous Galerkin solver combined to a level-set equation and to a modified HLLC Riemann solver. The main goal of our investigation is to assess closure conditions for the mass transfer models which accurately represent the physics of vapour bubble growth. We couple three models for the estimation of vaporisation mass fluxes to the interface Riemann solver. The Hertz-Knudsen relation and a kinetic relation predict the volumetric expansion well but cannot represent the instantaneous mass flux. A sub-grid scale heat flux model predicts the mass flux qualitatively better but the volumetric bubble expansion matches only at late time intervals. The dependency of the calibrated coefficients on the physical conditions is similar for the different vaporisation models.