Abstract: Flowfields associated with jet flows have been the subject of interest for the past several decades. Accurate definition of rocket exhaust jet flowfields is important to launch vehicle operational safety and missile detection and tracking. The ignition overpressure resulting from the interaction of a rocket exhaust jet flow with surrounding equipment affects vehicle safety during launch. The severe thermal environment associated with a rocket exhaust jet affects vehicle safety in flight. An advanced missile may incorporate stealth technology to evade detection and tracking by ground, airborne, or spacebased radar devices, but its exhaust jet flowfield provides a characteristic signature observable by optical sensors. Highly underexpanded jet flows also occur inside solid rocket motors and liquid rocket engines. The ultrashort dynamic events associated with ignition jet flows following initiation of an igniter inside a solid rocket motor or the opening of the propellant injection valve inside a liquid rocket engine can cause severe pressure wave and flow oscillation in the chamber, which could lead to erroneous ignition sequencing, combustion instability, and launch failures. 1 The interaction of rocket exhaust jet with the atmosphere results in a complicated flow structure comprised of shear layers, expansion fans, incident shocks, reflected shocks, slipstreams, and the Mach disks. In the transient state the flow structure also contains a traveling vortex ring. Traditional computational techniques, namely the method of characteristics, finite-difference, finite-volume, and finite-element methods, have been used to analyze rocket exhaust jet flowfields for many years with limited success. Strictly speaking, these methods can only be applied to steady-state problems and cannot effectively resolve true unsteady flow behavior involving the formation and evolution of the Mach disks and the traveling vortex ring. The numerical accuracy obtained from the application of these traditional methods to solve unsteady-state jet flowfields can be unsatisfactory.
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-07-07
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 9
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