Influences of interconnection structure on the flow and heat transfer behaviors of the hydrocarbon fuel in parallel SCRamjet regenerative cooling channels

Regenerative cooling is of great significance to secure the thermal structure and promote the flight Mach number range of the SCRamjet. Interconnection structure (ICS) plays a key role in improving the coolant flow distribution and heat sink utilization. In this work, the flow and heat transfer behaviors of the hydrocarbon fuel in parallel regenerative cooling channels with ICS are numerically investigated. The ICS improves the flow distribution and alleviates the local heat transfer deterioration. The influences of ICS configuration mainly consist of two aspects: (a). inter-channel pressure communication; (b). transverse mass transfer. The maximum wall temperature falls by 117.48 K/6.96% with the ICS introduced. Different sizes and positions of ICS are also studied. ICS with too small size cannot provide enough space for pressure communication and transverse mass transfer. While ICS with too large size leads to local heat transfer deterioration. The optimal Ф value to achieve the lowest heated wall temperature is Ф = 5 in this work. Regarding the position of ICS, it affects the local heat transfer deterioration through flow distribution and thermal load distribution. P_s = 50% (ICS locates at the middle of the heated section) presents the optimal cooling effect in this work. At last, the ICS configurations are universal to different heat flux distributions. The maximum wall temperature (Case q_f2) decreases by 137.72 K/8.15% compared with Case C1 (without ICS).