Numerical Simulations of Canted Nozzle and Scarfed Nozzle Flow Fields

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques are used for the analysis of issues concerning non-conventional (canted and scarfed) nozzle flow fields. Numerical simulations are carried out for the quality of flow in terms of axisymmetric nature at the inlet of canted nozzles of a rocket motor. Two different nozzle geometries are examined. The analysis of these simulation results shows that the flow field at the entry of the nozzles is non axisymmetric at the start of the motor. With time this asymmetry diminishes, also the flow becomes symmetric before the nozzle throat, indicating no misalignment of thrust vector with the nozzle axis. The qualitative flow fields at the inlet of the nozzles are used in selecting the geometry with lesser flow asymmetry. Further CFD methodology is used to analyse flow field of a scarfed nozzle for the evaluation of thrust developed and its direction. This work demonstrates the capability of the CFD based methods for the nozzle analysis problems which were earlier solved only approximately by making simplifying assumptions and semi empirical methods.