A STUDY ON A CLUSTERED LINEAR AEROSPIKE-NOZZLE COMBUSTOR

摘要

To clarify fundamental issues of linear aerospike nozzle engines, a ground level combustion test with a linear aerospike nozzle combustor composed of two 3-clustered-cell-nozzles and a truncated-spike-nozzle was conducted. The combustor has a nominal thrust of 14 kN, a maximum chamber pressure of 5.0 MPa, and utilizes LOX and methane as propellants. The obtained thrust coefficient efficiency,ηCF, at a ground condition was only about 87.5% in comparison with a prediction of 97.0%. To find the cause of this large performance loss, a cold flow test with a subscale model of the 3-clustered-cell-nozzles was conducted. A simple analysis with these results suggested that the losses due to gaps of cell nozzles and cell-to-cell interaction were one of the main causes of this performance loss.