Numerical Simulation of Aeroacoustic Phenomena in a Solid Rocket Booster

摘要

Flow instabilities in solid rocket boosters such as the Ariane 5 boosters could lead to pressure and thrust oscillations, which reduce the rocket motor performance and could damage the payload. Before any modification within the solid rocket boosters can be performed to eliminate the pressure oscillations, a good understanding of the fluid dynamic phenomena is needed. Because a complete analytical solution does not exist yet, experimental and numerical models need to be created as a platform for further investigation of these instabilities. We describe how a commercial computational-fluid-dynamics program (Fluent) can he used to simulate the aeroacoustic phenomena that exist in a solid rocket booster. The simulation is compared with experimental measurements of a 1/30-scale axisymmetric cold flow model of the Ariane 5 booster.