Numerical study of the separation of a turbulent boundary in rocket engine nozzles with an optimized supersonic part

Abstract

Abstract At present, propulsion systems are being developed for flights of aerospace vehicles both in the Earth’s atmosphere and beyond. At the stage of the propulsion system design, it is necessary to be able to reliably determine the energy and thrust characteristics of rocket engines in regimes with flow separation in the nozzle for a wide range of nozzle pressure ratio (NPR) (1 ≤ m ≤ 30, m = ph /pa , p—pressure, indices h and a refer, respectively, to the parameters of the external environment and at the nozzle exit) characterizing the flow in nozzles and jets. In this case, the nozzle, as a rule, has a thrust optimized contour (TOC) supersonic part. In this regard, we present some results of a numerical study of flows with separation of the turbulent boundary layer in the TOC nozzles of main rocket engines in the above range of the NPR based on the Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) system of equations.