• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.67-75
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• 2002

In the course of missile system design, jet plume impingement is encountered in designing airframe as well as launchers, requiring careful investigation of its effect on the system. In the present paper, recent works on such topic are presented to demonstrate usefulness of CFD results in helping design the hardware. The jet impinging flow structure exhibits such complex nature as shock shell, plate shock and Mach disk depending on the flow parameters. The main parameters are the ratio of the jet pressure to the ambient pressure and the distance between the nozzle and the wall. In the current application, the nozzle contour and the pressure ratio are held fixed, but the jet impinging distance is varied to illuminate the characteristics of the jet plume with the distance. The same methodology is then applied to a complex vertical launcher system (VLS), capturing its flow structure and major design parameter. These applications involving jets are thus hoped to demonstrate the usefulness and value of CFD in designing a complex structure in the real engineering environment.