Two-phase flow of solid hydrogen particles and liquid helium Original Research Article

Atomic hydrogen propellant feed systems may require transporting solid hydrogen particles containing atomic species from storage tanks to the engines using liquid helium as the carrier fluid. In this paper, a three-dimensional two-phase mixture model, along with the standard k–ε mixture turbulence model is employed to study the turbulent mixing of the fluid–particle slurry system. Numerical results show that turbulent flow is required to keep the hydrogen particles in suspension, which otherwise form a sliding layer of particles on top of the helium layer. Hydrogen particle concentration profiles in the slurry system are functions of particle size, flow velocity, and influx volume fraction of hydrogen particles. Particle dispersion at different Stokes numbers, different Kolmogorov length scales, and different time scales are discussed.