A Numerical Study of Flow Structure in Over-Expanded Rocket Nozzles

LE-7A is the main engine of the H-IIA launch vehicle. Under its development, the nozzle suffered from two troubles during startup and shutdown transients of the engine. One is a large side load, which damages the actuator of the nozzle, and the other is damage on regenerative cooling tubes due to high heat load. It has been considered that these problems are caused by a peculiar separation pattern called Restricted Shock Separation (RSS). RSS is observed in several rocket nozzles, for example, LE-7A nozzle, Vulcain nozzle and so on. Their contours are not conventional truncated perfect (TP) nozzle - LE-7A nozzle is a compressed truncated perfect (CTP) nozzle and Vulcain nozzle is a thrust optimized (TO) nozzle. Although it is believed that the occurrence of RSS is affected by the nozzle contour, the mechanisms are not clarified sufficiently yet. In the present paper, a parametric numerical study is carried out to investigate the mechanisms of the occurrence of RSS in CTP nozzles during startup transient. The results show that RSS is caused by the adverse pressure gradient downstream of the Mach disk. The adverse pressure gradient is caused by the interaction of the pressure wave and Mach disk. The method to avoid the occurrence of RSS is also examined. A small step inside the nozzle affects the position of the separation point and prevents RSS. The result shows that the possibility that RSS can be suppressed by controlling the position of the separation point.