3-D numerical computation and experimental study for a tile-shaped plug nozzle with characteristic plug contour

To know more about the high performance of the tile-shaped plug nozzle, a six cells tile-shaped test plug nozzle with characteristic plug contour was designed, and numerical and experimental studies were carried out for the model.The numerical simulation was based on NND scheme to solve three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations, and the cold flow experimental studies using air evaluated nozzle performance.The model studied here with inner nozzle area ratio of 4 and total area ratio of 40 was designed for the pressure ratio about 1047. The Mach number of flow field, the plug pressure profiles, the nozzle thrust coefficient efficiency were computed, and the plug surface pressure profiles for the three planes at different NPR were obtained.The numerical results show a good agreement with experiment data, and the maximum discrepancy is 1%.The model has high nozzle performance with the maximum thrust coefficient efficiency of 0.995, and has good altitude compensation characteristic, compared with the bell nozzle with efficiency range of 0.93～0.995 and with the pressure ratio from 55 to 2000. Compared with the four cells tile-shaped plug nozzle with simple plug contour, the six cells model has higher nozzle performance through optimized design for the plug contour, which can adequately show altitude compensation characteristic plug nozzles and can be a promising candidate for the future engineering application.