Aerodynamic Analysis of Supersonic Flow through a Dual Bell Nozzle using CFD

One of the most promising nozzle jet concepts is the dual-bell nozzle, which is an altitude adaptive nozzle. Recently, the concept of altitude-adaptive rocket nozzles has gained prominence and piqued the curiosity of space explorers. Dual-bell nozzles have two bells separated by an inflection point as its primary characteristic. The numerical investigation is carried out to find the Mach number, flow characteristics, and temperature change over time through three differently designed dual bell nozzles. The analysis is done on three bells with constant pressure and different areas with the second bell so as to give more velocity. Increasing and decreasing the area of the extended nozzle, pressure is controlled. Similarly, increasing of the pressure, the velocity gets decreased. The three dual bells are designed using SOLIDWORKS and analysis of the nozzle geometries are carried out using commercial code, ANSYS Fluent 2020. K-epsilon turbulence model is used for the simulation. A total of 50000 iterations are done with hybrid initialization. The current study demonstrates that decreasing area of dual bell nozzle gives more thrust.