Study of coupling thermal and mechanical effect on submerged nozzle in solid rocket motor

Abstract

The thermo-structural response of submerged nozzles is widely investigated in the design of modern rockets upon thermal loading and aerodynamic pressure. In this paper, by means of commercial finite element software with the subroutine of non-uniform pressure and non-uniform heat transfer coefficients, the simulation was performed to study the thermo-structural response of a submerged nozzle at the pressure 6MPa and stagnation temperature 3200K. By means of fluid software, the steady flow field with hot gas was determined. The aerodynamic parameters and heat coefficients were obtained. It was found that the thermal loading has an important influence on stress of throat insert for the solid rocket motor (SRM). Secondly, the hoop stress increases at first and then decreases with the increase of time for the throat insert. Finally, the ground hot firing test of SRM with submerged nozzle was carried out. The structural integrity of the submerged nozzle is very perfect during SRM operation. The present method is reasonable, which can be applied to study the thermo-structural response of submerged nozzle for SRM.

Impact of changing nozzle profiles on thermal and structural loads acting on nozzle wall

“…Gong et al [10] investigated the thermo-structural response of submerged nozzles. They found that the stresses increased clearly in case of combining both thermal and mechanical loadings much more than in the case of each one separately.…”