Comparison of the propulsion performance of aerospike and bell-shaped nozzle using hydrogen peroxide monopropellant under sea-level condition

A. Lai, S. S. Wei, C. H. Lai, J. L. Chen, Ying-Hao Liao, Jong-Shinn Wu*, Y. S. Chen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study investigates numerically the performance of applying aerospike nozzle in a hydrogen peroxide mono-propellant propulsion system. A set of governing equations, including continuity, momentum, energy and species conservation equations with extended k-Î turbulence equations, are solved using the finite-volume method. The hydrogen peroxide mono-propellant is assumed to be fully decomposed into water vapor and oxygen after flowing through a catalyst bed before entering the nozzle. The aerospike nozzle is expected to have high performance even in deep throttling cases due to its self-compensating characteristics in a wide range of ambient pressure environments. The results show that the thrust coefficient efficiency (Cf,η) of this work exceeds 90% of the theoretical value with a nozzle pressure ratio (PR) in the range of 20 ~ 45. Many complex gas dynamics phenomena in the aerospike nozzle are found and explained in the paper. In addition, performance of the aerospike nozzle is compared with that of the bell-shape nozzle.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)427-440
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Mechanics
Volume35
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jun 2019

Keywords

  • Aerospike nozzle
  • Computational fluid dynamics
  • Hydrogen peroxide
  • Mono-propellant

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