Mohamed Mandour and Shaaban Abdallah
Large Rocket engine nozzles performance deteriorate because of asymmetric flow separation that lead to side loads. The dual-bell nozzle is a promising two operating modes nozzle which consists of a base nozzle with low area ratio and a nozzle extension with high area ratio. Although the dual-bell nozzle improves the performance of large rocket engines, it suffers from side loads that occur during the transition between the two operating modes. This paper presents and assess a new nozzle that consist of backward facing steps to minimize/eliminate side loads. The backward facing steps geometry guarantees fixed stable local separation at the steps edges at all altitudes, thus eliminates the possibility of side loads as the rocket ascends. The assessment of the nozzle performance is carried out using CFD simulation of turbulent Navier-Stokes equations solver (fluent 14.5). The computed results for both dual-bell and backward facing steps nozzles are compared with the dual-bell nozzle experimental data.
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