Numerical Study and Performance Prediction for Gasgeous Hydrogen/Oxygen Bell Nozzle

Abstract

Three-dimensional reactive full Navier-Stokes simulations of hydrogen/oxygen flow in a nozzle having area ratio of 140 is evaluated using a detailed chemical kinetics reaction model. The flow over each overlapped grids is computed using a unified zonal method technique. The flow field computed by the present CFD code shows good agreement with the flow field computed by the TDK code except the position of the weak compression wave focusing on the nozzle axis. Isp profiles of the subscale nozzle computed by the CFD code assuming a laminar condition agree well with the experiment and those calculated by the TDK code. The measured heat flux distributes at higher nozzle expansion ratios also agree well with the laminar CFD results. The inconsistency of the prediction of turbulent boundary layer loss between TDK and CFD leads to some difference on Isp. The effect of grid resolution turned out to be small on Isp in the present conditions.