Numerical investigation of a Coandă-based fluidic thrust vectoring system for subsonic nozzles

Abstract

The numerical investigation of a novel subsonic thrust concept for fluidic thrust vectoring (FTV) of jet engines is the subject of this publication. FTV possibly offers advantages over conventional mechanical thrust vector control such as decreased complexity, mass and maintenance costs. The operating principle of the FTV nozzles under investigation at the Institute of Jet Propulsion is based on the Coandă effect. The applied concept of thrust vectoring uses dedicated secondary flow channels which are mounted in parallel around the nozzle inner cone or the nozzle wall. If required, bleed air, provided by extraction from the engine compressor or from an external source, is injected at a specific nozzle pressure ratio at the nozzle throat A_8 through these secondary ducts, resulting in the redirection of the secondary jet towards the convex Coandă surface. The interaction between the primary mass flow and the secondary jet leads to a redirection of the primary exhaust mass flow of the engine and thus to a vectoring of the exhaust flow. In this paper, the influence of different nozzle geometric parameters and different operating points are investigated within an extensive parametric study applied to a convergent two-dimensional thrust vectoring nozzle using computational fluid dynamics tools. Thrust vector deflection of up to {20}^{circ } at a maximum secondary to primary mass flow ratio of 10 % is achieved. Reducing this mass flow rate to 5 % still yields vectoring angles of up to {15}^{circ } whereby similar deflection angles compared to conventional mechanical thrust vectoring systems are achievable.