Publication Date:
2019-07-13
Description:
The space station uses small rocket motors, called thrusters, for orientation control. Because of the lack of viable design tools for small rockets, the initial thruster design was basically a very small version of a large rocket motor. Thrust measurements of the initial design were lower than predicted. To improve predictions it was decided to develop a verison of the RPLUS2D reacting flow code for thruster calculations. RPLUS2D employs an implicit finite volume, lower-upper symmetric successive overrelaxation (LU-SSOR) scheme for solving the complete two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations and species transport equations in a coupled and very efficient manner. The combustion processes are modeled by a 9-species, 18 step finite-rate chemistry model, and the turbulence is simulated by a Baldwin-Lomax algebraic model. The code is extended to handle multiple subsonic inlet conditions where the total mass flow is governed by conditions calculated at the thruster-throat. Results are shown for a thruster design where the overall mixture ratio is hydrogen rich. A calculation of a large area ratio divergent nozzle is also presented.
Keywords:
SPACECRAFT PROPULSION AND POWER
Type:
NASA-TM-102135
,
E-4932
,
NAS 1.15:102135
,
AIAA PAPER 89-2793
,
Joint Propulsion Conference; Jul 10, 1989 - Jul 12, 1989; Monterey, CA; United States
Format:
application/pdf
Permalink