SIMULATION OF SWIRLING FLOW THROUGH NOZZLES FOR A BIDIRECTIONAL VORTEX ROCKET ENGINE
Open Access
- Author:
- Gaglani, Rohan Maheshkumar
- Area of Honors:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Dr. Brian Maicke, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Ronald Walker, Thesis Honors Advisor
Dr. Ma'Moun A. Abu-Ayyad, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- Nozzle
CFD
Star CCM+
Rocket
Bi-Directional
Vortex
Engine
Space
Conical
Parabolic
Computational Fluid Dynamics
Simulation - Abstract:
- The purpose of this research is to simulate the swirling flow through a nozzle, which would be attached to the exhaust of the bidirectional vortex rocket nozzle. The simulation is conducted using a simulation software called STAR CCM+, a computational fluid dynamics program. In this numerical analysis, information is collected regarding the influence of swirling flow on the shock structure and Mach number of the nozzles. Two different nozzle geometries (conical and parabolic) are used for the simulation and the results are compared to simulations without swirling flow. The study is used to verify previous theoretical and experimental results and also to verify nozzle geometries proposed for the bidirectional vortex rocket engine design at Penn State Harrisburg. The simulations for the most part shows agreement with the experimental and theoretical results in terms of the effect of swirl on the shock structures and locations. While the shock structure is largely unchanged in the presence of swirl for the conical nozzle, a change in shock location is noticed in the parabolic nozzle case, which can be an important area of interest for further research. The study also examines the mass flow rates for the two types of flows and shows a reduction in the mass flow rate for the nozzle with swirling flow in the case of a conical nozzle.