Capabilities

This page shows what Pyskyfire can do at-a-glance. The goal of this page is to give you an overview of the current capabilities of the package, so that you can better understand if it fits your needs.

Every plot below is live output. Each one is generated by the example or validation case it belongs to and embedded here directly, so the page cannot drift away from what the code currently produces. Drag, zoom, and toggle traces in the legend to explore them.

Visualize cooling-channel geometry in 3D

  • Generate 3D visualizations of thrust chamber cooling-channel geometry.

  • Render cooling channels with their actual centerline placement and cross-section geometry.

  • Visualize interleaved and multi-pass cooling layouts.

  • Export an interactive browser-based 3D viewer for documentation or report generation.

  • Embed a rotatable 3D engine model directly into generated HTML documentation.

The reconstructed RL10A-3-3A thrust chamber from the validation case. 180 long tubes run the full length of the chamber and throat; 180 short tubes join them at the nozzle interlacing manifold, so the two sets alternate around the circumference downstream of it.

Generate thrust chamber and nozzle geometry

  • Sizes the throat and nozzle from propulsion inputs such as:

    • propellant combination

    • fuel and oxidizer inlet state

    • chamber pressure

    • mixture ratio

    • thrust

    • exit pressure or expansion target

    • ambient pressure

    • characteristic chamber length, \(L^*\)

  • Generate chamber geometry from chamber volume, contraction ratio, converging angle, throat radius, and chamber/nozzle blend radii.

  • Generate bell nozzles using a Rao-style thrust-optimized parabolic contour.

  • Generate conical nozzles for simpler comparison cases.

Contour of the methane engine from the advanced simulation tutorial, sized from thrust, chamber pressure, expansion ratio, and \(L^*\).

Solve regenerative cooling problems

  • Solve regenerative cooling along user-defined cooling circuits.

  • Support multiple cooling passes over different parts of the thrust chamber.

  • Support co-current and counter-current coolant flow.

  • Support different coolants in different cooling circuits.

  • Uses fluid property models for a wide range of liquid and gaseous coolants.

  • Model coolant pressure drop, temperature rise, velocity, heat flux, and wall temperatures along the engine.

  • Define cooling circuits over arbitrary axial spans of the thrust chamber.

  • Support complex cooling channel layouts, including:

    • straight channels

    • slanted or helical channels

    • interleaved channel circuits

    • circuits with different channel counts

    • circuits covering different chamber/nozzle regions

  • Support multiple cooling-channel cross-section models.

  • Support variable channel height, width, roughness, and hydraulic geometry along the engine.

  • Support multi-material chamber walls, enabling studies of:

    • layered wall temperature drops

    • thermal barrier coatings

  • Estimate temperature profile from hot gas through boundary layer, multi material-walls, and coolant boundary layer.

The four plots below come from the RL10A-3-3A validation case, where the Pyskyfire solution is compared against digitized curves from the published NASA modeling report.

The through-wall temperature profile at any axial station resolves each wall layer separately, along with the hot-gas and coolant-side films:

Temperature through the wall stack at the RL10 throat, from the bulk coolant out through the silver insert to the combustion gas.

Model film cooling

  • Solve film cooling cases for sub-critical pressure conditions.

  • Model coolant injection, entrainment, and film-cooling heat-transfer effects using implemented film-cooling correlations.

  • Couple film cooling to a regenerative circuit, so the film sets the hot-side heat flux wherever it covers the wall and the channels see the remaining load.

The same ethanol/N₂O chamber run twice, from examples/film_cooling/coupled_film_regen.py: regeneratively cooled alone, and with a film ring injecting part-way down the barrel. The dotted markers show the injection station and the liquid-film dryout point.

Solve full engine-cycle networks

  • Represent an engine as a network of connected thermodynamic stations, signal variables, and component blocks.

  • Solve expander-cycle-style engine architectures containing:

    • pumps

    • turbines

    • regenerative cooling passages

    • ducts

    • valves

    • injectors

    • mass-flow splitters

    • mass-flow mergers

    • recirculation paths

  • Solve coupled pump, turbine, pressure-loss, coolant-heating, and thrust-chamber constraints.

  • Track pressure, temperature, mass flow, and thermodynamic state through the engine.

  • Represent both fuel-side and oxidizer-side flow paths.

  • Use the engine-network formulation to investigate different expander-cycle layouts and pressure budgets.

The converged RL10A-3-3A expander cycle. The schematic is editable: drag blocks to rearrange it, and save the layout back as JSON to keep the arrangement.

Once the cycle is closed, every station carries a full thermodynamic state. Here it is compared station by station against the published RL10 fuel-side engine data:

Estimate hot-gas and nozzle performance

  • Solve chemical-equilibrium-based thrust chamber performance using NASA CEA as a backend.

  • Estimate useful propulsion parameters such as:

    • vacuum and/or ambient specific impulse

    • characteristic velocity, \(c^*\)

    • thrust coefficient, \(C_F\)

    • total mass flow rate

    • oxidizer and fuel mass flow rate

    • throat radius and throat area

    • expansion ratio

    • chamber volume from \(L^*\)

  • Generate hot-gas property distributions throughout the chamber and nozzle, including quantities such as:

    • pressure

    • temperature

    • Mach number

    • molecular mass

    • ratio of specific heats

    • enthalpy

    • specific heat

    • thermal conductivity

    • viscosity

    • Prandtl number

    • density

    • speed of sound

Combustion-gas dynamic viscosity along the RL10 chamber and nozzle. Every property in the list above is available on the same axial grid.

Analyze pumps and turbomachinery

  • Provide pump and turbine utility models for engine-cycle calculations.

  • Estimate pump power, turbine power, pressure rise, pressure drop, and efficiency effects.

  • Support first-order sizing and analysis of rotating machinery components used in liquid rocket engine cycles.

  • Include pump-related geometry and visualization utilities for early-stage turbopump design work.

Generate plots and reports

  • Generate built-in plots for common engine analysis outputs, including:

    • thrust chamber contour

    • coolant pressure

    • coolant temperature

    • coolant velocity

    • wall temperature

    • heat flux

    • coolant flow area

    • hot-gas transport properties

    • engine-network diagrams

    • pressure-temperature diagrams

  • Generate standalone HTML reports containing tables, plots, images, and embedded interactive content.

  • Save and reload analysis results for post-processing.

The RL10A-3-3A validation report is one such report: a single self-contained HTML file holding every figure on this page and many more.

Support scripted design studies

  • Use Python scripts to define complete engine cases, run analyses, and post-process results.

  • Modify geometry, materials, coolant circuits, propellants, pressures, mixture ratio, thrust level, and cycle parameters programmatically.

  • Use examples and validation cases as templates for new thrust chamber and engine-cycle studies.