23rd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 8-13 September, 2002, Toronto, Canada
Paper ICAS 2002-R60

NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION ON THE FLOW CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUPERSONIC JET IMPINGING ON AN AXI-SYMMETRIC DEFLECTOR

S. Sankaran (1), R. M. Rajeswara (1), T. N. V. Satyanarayana (1), N. Satyanarayana (1), K. Visvanathan (1), R. B. Kotapati (2)
(1) ISRO, Sriharikota, India; (2) Arizona State University, USA

Keywords: impinging supersonic jets, axi-symmetric jet deflector, shock pattern, nozzle stand-off distance, lift-off scenario

The present study deals with the impingement characteristics of a supersonic jet issuing out of a convergent-divergent nozzle over an axi-symmetric jet deflector. An attempt has been made to numerically compute this impingement flow field during the rocket lift-off scenario. An axi-symmetric Navier-Stokes code has been used which adopts a control volume based finite difference scheme with k-e turbulence model. During the rocket lift-off scenario, the distance between the nozzle exit and the apex of the jet deflector (L/De) varies gradually, where, L is the distance between the nozzle exit and the apex of the jet deflector at particular time (t) and De is nozzle exit diameter. The numerical flow visualization obtained for each case indicates a change in the resulting flow field. The present study gives the quantitative and qualitative differences in the impingement flow field for some typical L/De cases during the rocket lift-off scenario.

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