A Computational Study on the Unsteady Lateral Loads in a Rocket Nozzle

Highly over-expanded nozzle of the rocket engines will be excited by non-axial forces due to flow separation at sea level operations. Since rocket engines are designed to produce axial thrust to power the vehicle, non-axial static and/or dynamic forces are not desirable. Several engine failures were attributed to the side loads. Present work investigate the unsteady flow in an over-expanded rocket nozzle in order to estimate side load during a shutdown/starting. Numerical computations has been carried out with density based solver on multi-block structured grid. Present solver is explicit in time and unsteady time step is calculated using dual time step approach. AUSMDV is considered as a numerical scheme for the flux calculations. One equation Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model is selected. Results presented here is for two nozzle pressure ratio i.e. 100 and 20. At 100 NPR, restricted shock separation (RSS) pattern is observed while, 20 NPR shows free shock separation (FSS) pattern. Side load is observed during the transition of separation pattern at different NPR.