Modeling and analysis of fluid-solid coupling heat transfer and fluid flow in transonic nozzle

Abstract

Solid rocket motors (SRMs) are the power units of modern aerospace transportation, and it is of great significance to predict their flow and heat transfer characteristics by numerical simulation. This numerical study is based on a self-developed code framework MHT (Multi-X Heat Transfer, where X represents the region, scale, physical field, and other aspects) and presents an effective method of analyzing fluid–solid coupling heat transfer problem in an axisymmetric supersonic nozzle. For the nozzle wall heat conduction and nozzle-in fluid flow there are two kinds of solution methods, the detached (solved separately in solid and fluid region and them coupling at the interface) and the whole field method (solve the conduction and convection simultaneously). The whole field method is more efficient but few scholars use it to solve the nozzle coupled problem. This paper introduces the numerical details of the whole field solution method, and provides a new idea for the coupling solution of the nozzle. In addition, a mixed grid system is proposed around the interface region of fluid and solid, in which the quadrilateral structured mesh is used at the fluid side, and the triangular unstructured mesh is used for the outer fluid region and the whole solid region to ensure the accuracy of the 1st-oder normal derivatives calculation. The self-developed code is validated by comparison with well-known commercial soft-ware. Transient results of temperature and velocity are presented for the instants of 1st 20 and 40 s of a practical nozzle.