Numerical studies on four-engine rocket exhaust plume impinging on flame deflectors with afterburning

Abstract

This paper studies the four-engine liquid rocket flow field during the launching phase. Using three-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equations and two-equation realizable k-epsilon turbulence model, an impact model is established and flow fields of plume impinging on the two different shapes of flame deflectors, including wedge-shaped flame deflector and cone-shaped flame deflector, are calculated. The finite-rate chemical kinetics is used to track chemical reactions. The simulation results show that afterburning mainly occurs in the mixed layer. And the region of peak pressure occurs directly under the rocket nozzle, which is the result of the direct impact of exhaust plume. Compared with the wedge-shaped flame deflector, the cone-shaped flame deflector has great performance on guiding exhaust gas. The wedge-shaped and cone-shaped flame deflectors guide the supersonic exhaust plume away from the impingement point with two directions and circumferential direction, respectively. The maximum pressure and temperature on the wedge-shaped flame deflector surface are 37.2% and 9.9% higher than those for the cone-shaped flame deflector. The results provide engineering guidance and theoretical significance for design in flame deflector of the launch platforms.

Keywords

• Four-engine rocket
• Afterburning
• Impinging flow field
• Different deflectors
• Numerical simulations