Differential throttling and fluidic thrust vectoring in a linear aerospike

Abstract

Aerospike nozzles represent an interesting solution for Single-Stage-To-Orbit or clustered launchers owing to their self-adapting capability, which can lead to better performance compared to classical nozzles. Furthermore, they can provide thrust vectoring in several ways. a simple solution consists of applying differential throttling when multiple combustion chambers are used. An alternative solution is represented by fluidic thrust vectoring, which requires the injection of a secondary flow from a slot. In this work, the flow field in a linear aerospike nozzle was investigated numerically and both differential throttling and fluidic thrust vectoring were studied. The flow field was predicted by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations. The thrust vectoring performance was evaluated in terms of side force generation and axial force reduction. The effectiveness of fluidic thrust vectoring was investigated by changing the mass flow rate of secondary flow and injection location. The results show that the response of the system can be non-monotone with respect to the mass flow rate of the secondary injection. In contrast, differential throttling provides a linear behaviour but it can only be applied to configurations with multiple combustion chambers. Finally, the effects of different plug truncation levels are discussed.