Numerical Simulation of Reacting and Non-Reacting Nozzle Flows

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of several numerical studies of internal nozzle flows. The simulated flow fields are of non-reacting, ideal-gas flows, as well as flows with chemical reactions of the combustion products passing through the nozzle. The combustion process itself is not being simulated. The simulations are conducted using a number of flow solvers contained within the in-house suite of flow solvers collectively referred to as Tenasi. The older variants of these flow solvers are serial, structured-grid codes which allow for multiple sub-domain decomposition with arbitrary block-to-block connectivity. The newer code is a parallel, unstructured-grid solver that has been in a state of continual, and ongoing, development over the past seven years; sub-domain decomposition for this solver is completely arbitrary. Although there is noticeable difference in the code structure of the older and newer versions, the basic numerical algorithms are the same. Results from both the old and new solvers are compared to each other and to experiment for the non-reacting case. For a hypothetical reacting flow case, results from both the old and new solvers are compared to each other and to the results from the rocket engine analysis code, TDK, which is widely used throughout the industry. Comparison of these results to experiment (non-reacting) and TDK results (reacting) serves the purpose of validating the Tenasi solvers for nozzle flow applications.