Design results of a supersonic nozzle with double expansion for a first stage liquid rocket engine using computer analysis methods

Ivan Dubrovskyi

Abstract


The subject of this study is dual-bell supersonic nozzles of liquid rocket engines. The goal is to design a dual-bell supersonic nozzle that will provide maximum thrust for a liquid rocket engine in the first stage of a launch vehicle by solving an optimization problem using numerical simulation methods. The goal of the study is to choose the exit pressures of each part of the dual-bell nozzle based on the known flight trajectory of the launch vehicle, set and solve the problem of optimizing the dual-bell nozzle contour, and assess the impact of the use of a dual-bell nozzle on the efficiency of a liquid-propellant rocket engine. The methods used are: numerical methods for solving the hyperbolic system of unsteady equations of gas dynamics and multidimensional minimization problems. The following results were obtained. The formulation and solution of the optimization problem of the contour of a dual-bell supersonic nozzle, considering the design limitations in the form of a fixed length of the nozzle, is carried out. By analyzing the flight path of the first stage of the launch vehicle, a first approximation of the nozzle contour was obtained. For further calculations, both sections were approximated by parabolas, the coefficients of which, together with the lengths of the sections, formed a vector of optimized parameters. An expression for the axial component of thrust with the opposite sign was used as the objective function to solve the minimization problem. Because of solving the optimization problem, a dual-bell nozzle contour was designed to provide maximum thrust. An assessment of the effectiveness of his work was also conducted. The calculated value of the average along the trajectory of the specific impulse when using a dual-bell nozzle was higher by 1.6% than when using a standard nozzle. Conclusions. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is as follows: the design of the dual-bell nozzle contour was performed by solving the problem of multidimensional optimization, taking into account the design constraints, and using computational analysis methods

Keywords


dual-bell nozzle; liquid-propellant rocket engine; nozzle optimization

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.32620/aktt.2023.6.02