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Influence of Convergent Section Length and Angle on Performance of

Supersonic Nozzle

Article · December 2017

DOI: 10.26692/sujo/2017.12.0048

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 Sindh Univ. Res. Jour. (Sci. Ser.) Vol.49 (004) 727-732 (2017)
http://doi.org/10.26692/sujo/2017.12.0048

SINDH UNIVERSITY RESEARCH JOURNAL (SCIENCE SERIES)

Influence of Convergent Section Length and Angle on Performance of Supersonic Nozzle

I. MIR++, S. SAMO, T. HUSSAIN, I. ALI, H. A. K. DURANI*

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mehran UET, Jamshoro

Received 6th March 2017 and Revised 12th October 2017

Abstract: Performance of propulsion system is the key parameter in getting efficient flying vehicles. The exhaust nozzle is highly
important component of propulsion system, in order to improve nozzle performance understanding of geometrical parameters is
mandatory. The nozzle design need optimization for various parameters like inlet, throat and exit width, but impact of inlet convergent
angle and length have got less attention. In this research effect of convergent section length and angle of supersonic nozzle were analyzed
by keeping same expansion ratio and boundary conditions. The numerical simulation was made on unstructured gird. The computational
work is carried out on 2D axi-symmetric density based, coupled solver with viscous k   SST turbulence model and linearized
through implicit scheme. Study reveals that 28.5o inlet angle would give best result and maximum thrust force would be produced at this
angle. From simulation results it was analyzed that flow behavior inside the nozzle is highly complex nature.

Keywords: Convergent divergent nozzle, Supersonic flow, Thrust performance, computational Fluid dynamics.

1. INTRODUCTION which in turns causes further drop in density by

Since aircrafts consume exhaustible, polluting and increasing velocity in supersonic range.
high price fossil fuels. Therefore its efficient design
would be highly important to meet global energy and The nozzle geometry is highly important because it
environment requirement. The propulsion system is directly affect the overall performance of propulsion
highly significant part that is responsible power system. Particularly the mean fluid velocity field,
generation and flight of aircraft. Efficiency of pressure as well as turbulent characteristics plays strong
propulsion system is greatly affected by nozzle role in occurrences of many physical processes inside
performance. Nozzle is designed to control the rate of the nozzle. In propulsion system, main function of
flow, speed and pressure as well as to convert heat supersonic nozzle is to provide thrust force. Whereas
energy into kinetic energy. Nozzle transforms high thrust generated by nozzle is the function of many
pressure and high temperature flue gases into high geometric parameters such inlet area, expansion ratio,
velocity, low temperature and low-pressure gases. Main nozzle pressure ratio as well as lengths of convergent-
purpose of nozzle is to reduce pressure to possible low divergent sections etc.
level and to exhaust gases at very high velocity. This
result increase in rearward momentum which in turns Due to the number of applications of Convergent-
enables heavier machines to fly in air. Usually nozzle divergent nozzle numerous research was conducted to
with fixed convergent section followed by fix divergent improve nozzle aerodynamic performance. In ref
section are used in aircrafts, aerospace shuttles, (Grisnik, et al., 2013) (Pearson, et al., 1996) authors
Ramjets, scramjets and in rocket engines (Boyanapalli, conducted research to analyze losses occurs inside the
2013) (Benson., 2013). The number of research has nozzle. Their Research concluded that there are basic
been conducted to understand effect of nozzle geometry three main contributors which enhance losses inside the
to enhancing nozzle performance e.g (Dusa,1989) nozzle which are viscous losses, chemical kinetic loss
(Antipas, et al., 2011). Outcomes of these investigations and other is divergence losses. Their research also
gave the new concept of divergent portion to the illustrated that variation in nozzle divergence portions
convergent nozzle, which made it possible to get highly affects viscous losses. To predict the effect of
supersonic exhaust from Convergent-divergent nozzle. nozzle divergence angle, His research reveals that
In ref (Bayt, and Breuer. 1998) (Khattab, and Barakat, decrease in divergence angle from 45o to 20o give rise
2002) further illustrated that divergent portion further another desirable affect by reducing chemical kinetic
increase flue gas velocity by causing increase in volume loss. His research also concluded that increase in
++
Corresponding author: Email: [email protected]
*Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mehran UET ZAB, Khairpur
I. MIR et al., 728

divergence angle up-to 65o reduce divergence losses to parameters for nozzle design optimization. In this
zero but in turns it increase weight of nozzle which is research number of 2D model of convergent divergent
not practical suitable. In ref. (Ketsdever, 2005) author nozzle were designed at different length of convergent
illustrated that exit flow velocity can be increased by section and corresponding convergent angles. 2D model
reducing length of nozzle. Another finding of this was further processed for gird generation in ANSYS
research was that impulse force can be increased by ICEM. Hybrid meshing was done to improve mesh
increasing divergence angle from 20o to 40o with minute quality and divide physical domain into number of small
viscous effects. These numerical results also verifies the sections named as cells. High quality mesh was
previous experiments conducted by Whalen generated to improve solution accuracy through
(Whalen,1987)], where it was found that the conical applying mesh refinement and inflation. Inflation was
nozzle with 25o divergence angle have better applied on the divergent section wall so that flow
performance than conical nozzle with 20 divergence separation and boundary layer effects can be clearly
angle. In ref. (Noh, 2011) author conducted research to visualized
analyze the effect of divergence length where it is
concluded that while reducing angle from 28 to 24 Table.1. Shows the design specification of supersonic nozzle
thrust decrease by 18% whereas for divergence angle
variation from 18 to 16 degree causes 3% increase in Parameter Specifications
thrust. His research also found that separation can’t be Inlet Diameter 1000mm
eliminated. Study was carried out to analyze the effect Throat Diameter 304mm
of divergence angle on thrust coefficient. Recent Exit Diameter 861mm
research shows that divergence angle has significant
Curvature radius at throat 228mm
effect on the discharge coefficient for the nozzle having
throat diameter less the 1mm and operating at Convergent angle 30o
atmospheric conditions (Kim, et al., 2010). Divergent Angle 15o
Pressure at inlet 44.10 bar
Temperature at inlet 3400K
Inlet mass flow rate 860Kg/s

2.2 Governing Equation

The fluid flow governing equations like continuity
equation, momentum equation and energy equations are
derived through applying the basic conservation
principal of mass, momentum as well as energy. Those
equation are Partial Differential equations (PDE) which
difficult to solve analytical or numerically because they
take into account the small fluctuation in fluid
properties. Therefore, theses complex equations are
Fig. 1 Meshed model of axisymmetric CD nozzle simplified through applying Reynolds averaging. By
using averaging velocity of fluid in X-direction is
From literature, it is observed that still nozzle
design was optimized for various parameters like inlet, ui  ui  ui
throat and exit width, but impact of inlet convergent
Whereas ui and ui represents average and
angle and length have got less attention. Hence present
study aims to analyze the effect of nozzle convergent fluctuating components of velocity respectively.
section length and angle by keeping same expansion Similarly, for any other scalar quantity

  i  i
ratio and boundary conditions. Present study mainly
focuses on the convergent section effect on the thrust
performance of supersonic nozzle. As in above expression density is decomposed into
2. NUMERICAL FEATURES average and fluctuating components. By applying
2.1 Nozzle Modeling and Meshing Reynolds averaging technique following equations are
In order to investigate the effect of convergent obtained in terms time averaged components.
section length nozzle is modeled in ANSYS design
 
modeler. Nozzle design specifications are given in
   ui   0 (1)
(Table. 1) those parameters are considered as base t xi
 Influence of Convergent Section Length… 729

p    u u 2 u  
required value, the highly refined gird may be removed
 
 ui    uiu j      i  j  ij i    uiuj  (2) or replaced with coarser one.
t x j xi x j   x j xi 3 xi  x j
2.3 Computational Method/ Methodology
The Eq. (1) and (2) are known as Reynolds average The numerical simulation of supersonic flow
Navier-Stokes equations. Additional terms in above through convergent-divergent nozzle is performed on
equation are encountering the effect of turbulences. The FLUENT code. FLUENT use Finite Volume Method

  in
(FVM) to solve Reynolds average Navier-Stokes
last term   uiuj Eq. (2) is called Reynolds (RANS) with turbulence models on unstructured mesh.

 
stresses. Reynolds stress   uiuj terms should be
In present study governing partial differential equations
of fluid flow were linearized through implicit scheme
modeled by selecting appropriate turbulence model to because it converges more quickly than explicit scheme
get accurate results (Wilcox, 1998). To select best solver. Simulation is conducted on two-dimensional,
turbulence model various researches are conducted axi-symmetric model in order to reduce computational
which come know that k   model provides good time. Simulation of Steady state is Carried out by using
density-based solver to take into account effects of
results then k   model for near wall problems compressibility, pressure based solver and density-based
(Ferreira, 2007) (Wang, 2010). Though k   model solver can be used for wide range of flows but density
is better but its great sensitivity for the  values near based solver is provides better accuracy for high speed
ir-rotational boundaries creates problem in case of shear compressible flows. There are number of turbulence
flows. But this problem was solved by Menter’s models available from them k-ε & k-ω models are

k   SST model which combines merits of k  

widely used in turbulence modeling. They both have
good accuracy as well as don’t need higher
and k   model for near the wall and away from computational resources. In-spite of that each model
wall flows (Dai, et al., 2010) The Shear Stress have some limitation likewise k-ε model is more
Transport (SST) model proved to be very helpful for suitable for fully turbulent flows, initial iterative
encountering the effects in boundary layer and flow solution where as it doesn’t provide suitable results in
separation regions. Their transport equations of k   high pressure gradient, adverse pressure gradient and
large separation regions flows (Schulz, 2011). In these
SST model are (Kumar, and Chatterjee, 2008)
types of flows k-ω model yield best results by allowing
accurate near wall treatment as well as it gives better
 (  k )  (  kui )  k
  ( k )  Gk  Yk  S k performance for adverse pressure gradient flows and
t xi x j x j also flows through complex geometries. Many
(3)
 (  )  ( ui )   researches reveal that k-ω model is more suitable than
  (  )  G  Y  D  S other one or two-equation RANS models for complex
t xi x j x j
(4) boundary layer flows and for flow through nozzle
2.3 Gird Adoption problems.
The accuracy of numerical solution is highly
dependent on gird quality; therefore, to enhance gird 2.4 Discretization Scheme
quality in region of high pressure gradient is extremely In order to reduce errors and to get more accurate
important for getting accurate results at lower result of numerical simulation, setting of numerical
computational cost. This technique begins with entire schemes is key step likewise selection of turbulence
computational domain which is meshed with coarse model. Hence second order upwind Discretization
cells and faces, then all the individual cells are selected scheme is used in this research work for finding the
for refinement by using user defined criteria or on the solution of equation s mentioned in (Table 2).
basis of Richardson-extrapolation. In this process, all Table 2. Each Equation Discretize as
the coarse cells are refined to finer cell one. After mesh
adaption, individual mesh cells on a single Pressure second order
predetermined level of refinement are passed off for Momentum second order
advancement of time by integrator. At the end, Turbulent Kinetic energy second order
correction process is employed to perform transfer of Turbulence dissipation rate second order
conserved parameters between the interfaces of coarse
and fine gird cells, so that quantities leaving from one Two upwind nodes considered to predict the value of
gird cell should exactly balance the amount of entering eastern face. It assumes that gradient of considered node
quantities at the other cell borders. If at any point in and eastern face is same as of western node and the
computational domain level of refinement exceeds the considered node.
 I. MIR et al., 730

e   p  
 p w  e 
 p  w  e   p    therefore computational time is reduced by five times.
The FMG initialization method is shown in Fig. 2 and it
p (5)
e   p  p   w  p  w is also found that FMG initialized solution is far closer
to final solution initialized by general initialization
Multi-dimensional linear reconstruction approach is method.
applied to determine the quantities of cell faces for
higher order accuracy. This technique uses Taylor
expansion series for cell centered solution about cell-
centroid to achieve higher order accuracy. Therefore,
when second-order upwind discretization scheme is
selected, the values of  f are calculated by using
following expression.

 f    . s (6)

In equation (6), the cell-centered value is ϕ and

gradient in the upstream cell is ∇ϕ, whereas Δs represent Fig. 2.The FMG initialization method
the displacement vector from upstream cell centroid to
face centroid. In order to calculate value of the cell- 3. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
centered the gradient in each cell should be known. The CFD simulation results are presented to
Hence the gradient ∇ϕ is calculated from below visualize the variation of various fluid parameters
equation by using divergence theorem, during flow through nozzle. In Fig. 3 velocity contour
inside the CD nozzle is presented, from the velocity
N faces contour it is analyzed that fluid velocity increases in
1
 
V
 f
f A (7) nozzle from throat to exit. Velocity at the inlet of nozzle
is approximately zero while it achieved sonic condition
The value of f is computed by taking average near the throat and then fluid velocity reaches to
2210m/s at exit. In (Fig. 4) pressure contour is
of  from the two cells adjacent to that face. In presented. Through visualizing pressure contour it is
equation (7) the maxima and minima points are observed that very rapid change in pressure was
introduced because the gradient   is limited observed in the vicinity of nozzle throat. (Fig. 5)
presents turbulent viscosity ratio variation inside the
(FLUENT Inc., FLUENT 6.3.2, User Guide. 2006),
supersonic CD nozzle. From turbulent viscosity ratio
contour it was found that turbulent viscosity ratio
2.5 Full Multi-Gird initialization
experience significant change in convergent section
Once the case is initialized, the numerical solution
whereas variation in turbulent viscosity ratio was also
can be further improved through text user interface
observed at the starting divergent portions. Variation in
command of the FMG initialization. Basically, FMG is
dynamic pressure was presented in (Fig. 6) and from
used to increase convergence rate of the simulation. It
dynamic pressure contour it was analyzed that dynamic
reduces computational time by two ways. In first
pressure achieved its highest value near the throat and
method, it assumes that flow is in-viscid which in turn
then starts decreasing with very low rate.
reduces number of flow governing equations hence
reduces computational time. From the numerical
simulations, it is found that by considering flow in-
viscid computational time is reduced up to one half of
the viscous flows. In the second case, FMG uses another
strategy of multi-gridding. In this approach, adjacent
cells are merged to form larger cells and then those new
generated cells are combined to form a larger one yet.
FMG then allows solver to find out solution on coarse
grid, split to the intermediary refinement as well as re-
converges and finally original mesh is restored and
solution would be re-converging. In this way number of
cells in computational domain is reduced to speed up
solution. In case of three dimensional grids five Fig.3. Show velocity variation in Fig. 4 Shows pressure
nozzle. variation in nozzle
tetrahedral cells are combined to form one tetrahedron
Influence of Convergent Section Length… 731

2268
2266
2264 Thrust…
2262

Thrust generated (KN)

2260
2258
Fig. 5. Turbulent viscosity Fig. 6 Shows dynamic pressure
ratio contour inside nozzle. variation inside nozzle. 2256

The CFD simulation of nozzle also capable of 2254

providing numerical values of various fluid parameters 2252
like pressure, velocity, temperature and turbulences at
various sections of nozzle. In this section, numerical 2250
calculations were performed on the basis of obtained 2248
results. For present study fluid velocity and pressure at 602 615 628 640 645 650 655
the nozzle exit are required to calculate thrust force Nozzle Convergent length (mm)
generated, those values were obtained from nozzle CFD
simulation. Thrust produced as result of gases exhaust
from the nozzle can be calculated through applying Fig. 7 shows the variation of thrust generated against nozzle
convergent section length
given equation.

T  mVe   Pe  P0  Ae (8) 4. CONCLUSION

In present study nozzle design was optimized
through varying convergent section length and angle by
In the above Eq. (8) T , m , Ve , Pe , P0 & Ae keeping same expansion ratio and boundary conditions.
represents thrust generated, mass flow rate, exit The numerical simulation was made by using
velocity, exit pressure, free stream pressure and exit Fluent14.5 on unstructured gird. The computational
velocity respectively. work is carried out on 2D axi-symmetric density based,
Table: 3 Shows the variation of nozzle design and their
coupled solver with viscous k   SST turbulence
performance model and linearized through implicit scheme. The
research results revealed that nozzle thrust performance
Nozzle increases from base design and at certain value of
Convergent
Convergent Thrust (KN)
length (mm)
angle(degrees) convergent section length it achieves highest value then
again start decreasing. Study reveals that 28.5o inlet
602 30 2254.08759
angle would give best result and maximum thrust force
615 29.5 2255.48579
would be produced at this angle. From simulation
628 29 2257.48634 results it was analyzed that flow behavior inside the
640 28.5 2265.53869 nozzle is highly complex nature.
645 28.3 2258.58668
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