COMPARISON OF THE PROPULSION PERFORMANCE OF AEROSPIKE AND BELL-SHAPED NOZZLE USING HYDROGEN PEROXIDE MONOPROPELLANT UNDER SEA-LEVEL CONDITION

Abstract

This study investigates numerically the performance of applying aerospike nozzle in a hydrogen peroxide mono-propellant propulsion system. A set of governing equations, including continuity, momentum, energy and species conservation equations with extended k-epsilon turbulence equations, are solved using the finite-volume method. The hydrogen peroxide mono-propellant is assumed to be fully decomposed into water vapor and oxygen after flowing through a catalyst bed before entering the nozzle. The aerospike nozzle is expected to have high performance even in deep throttling cases due to its self-compensating characteristics in a wide range of ambient pressure environments. The results show that the thrust coefficient efficiency (C-f,C-eta) of this work exceeds 90% of the theoretical value with a nozzle pressure ratio (PR) in the range of 20 similar to 45. Many complex gas dynamics phenomena in the aerospike nozzle are found and explained in the paper. In addition, performance of the aerospike nozzle is compared with that of the bell-shape nozzle.