The erosion of rocket-nozzle ablative thermal protection materials during the solid-rocket-motor burning time needs to be accounted for to get reliable performance predictions, especially for long-duration firings and/or small nozzles (that is, upper stages). This work numerically investigates the erosion behavior as a function of chamber conditions for the nozzles of the Vega launch vehicle solid rocket motors: Zefiro 9, Zefiro 23, and P80. This study has been performed using a Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equation solver with specific application to ablative nozzles. The throat region of the nozzle, and specifically the carbon/carbon nozzle insert, has received special attention because its evolution has a significant impact on the motor performance. The analysis of the throat insert has been performed for the three full-scale nozzles by comparing the predictions to measured data from static firing tests. A sensitivity analysis to the most important model parameters that can influence the throat erosion prediction has been performed to highlight modeling capabilities and limits, as well as numerical uncertainties. Finally, a characterization in terms of nozzle throat ablation mass flux dependency upon the motor chamber pressure has been derived for the three nozzles via a power fitting of the numerical data performed at discrete chamber pressure levels.


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    Title :

    Numerical Simulation of Chemical Erosion in Vega Solid-Rocket-Motor Nozzles


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2017-08-31


    Size :

    17 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English





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