Oxidative coking of supercritical-pressure RP-3 in rotating channels: Effects of flow-field reconstruction and pseudo-critical thermophysical behavior

Regenerative cooling using the heat-sink capacity of supercritical-pressure hydrocarbon fuels is a promising approach for protecting turbine blades. However, oxidative coking can impair heat transfer and block cooling channels, while rotation alters precursor formation, transport, and deposition. This study numerically investigates the flow, heat transfer, and oxidative coking of supercritical-pressure RP-3 aviation kerosene in a rotating channel. Results show that rotation suppresses coking by weakening thermal stratification, whereas flow-field reconstruction causes wall-to-wall deposition differences, at the condition of 5000 r/min. At approximately 400 r/min, coking shifts from concentration-controlled to temperature-controlled behavior. The total deposition rate first increases and then decreases with rotational speed, falling by 78.21% from 1000 to 7000 r/min. Increasing mass flow rate suppresses coking but aggravates deposition nonuniformity; at 1.75 g/s, the total deposition rate on the leading wall of the centrifugal section is 4.60 times that on the trailing wall. Raising the inlet temperature from 300 to 450 K increases the total deposition rate by 138.27%. As heat flux increases, the total deposition rate initially rises but then falls as thermal acceleration shortens the fuel residence time. At higher inlet temperatures or heat fluxes, thermal acceleration reduces local deposition peaks, while thermophysical-property variations near the pseudo-critical temperature reduce leading-to-trailing-wall deposition differences in the centrifugal section. Outlet pressure has a minor effect, with the total deposition rate varying by less than 3% over 3.0–5.0 MPa. Inlet concentration perturbations of ±20% primarily affect deposition magnitude while largely preserving its spatial distribution. A rotation-corrected dimensionless heat-load number captures coking trends at high rotational speeds. These findings support the thermal-protection design of turbine blades.