Numerical simulation of a supersonic mixing chemical oxygen-iodine laser with ramp nozzle arrays

Abstract

The adoption of ramp nozzle array to a supersonic mixing chemical oxygen-iodine lasers is examined by simulating the mixing and reacting flow fields numerically. Then, the efficiency of the ramps to improve the resulting gain region is studied. The compressible Navier-Stokes equations with a detailed chemical kinetic model are solved by using a full- implicit finite volume method. The numerical results show that streamwise vortices, which are not anticipated in the previous papers, are induced downstream of the base relief region of the ramp nozzle array and accelerate the mixing and reaction significantly. The contact surface between the reactant streams is stretched very rapidly due to the vortices resulting in much higher laser performance.