Abstract: The scaling of heat transfer in gas–gas injector combustor is investigated theoretically, numerically and experimentally based on the previous study on the scaling of gas–gas combustion flowfield. The similarity condition of the gas–gas injector combustor heat transfer is obtained by conducting a formulation analysis of the boundary layer Navier–Stokes equations and a dimensional analysis of the corresponding heat transfer phenomenon. Then, a practicable engineering scaling criterion of the gas–gas injector combustor heat transfer is put forward. The criterion implies that when the similarity conditions of inner flowfield are satisfied, the size and the pressure of gas–gas combustion chamber can be changed, while the heat transfer can still be qualitatively similar to the distribution trend and quantitatively correlates well with the size and pressure as q ∝ p_c^0.8d_t^-0.2 . Based on the criterion, single-element injector chambers with different geometric sizes and at different chamber pressures ranging from 1 MPa to 20 MPa are numerically simulated. A single-element injector chamber is designed and hot-fire tested at seven chamber pressures from 0.92 MPa to 6.1 MPa. The inner wall heat flux are obtained and analysed. The numerical and experimental results both verified the scaling criterion in gas–gas injector combustion chambers under different chamber pressures and geometries.

Key words: similarity, heat transfer, gas-gas combustion, simulation, experiment