Assessment of gas thermodynamic characteristics on fluidic thrust vectoring performance: Analytical, experimental and numerical study

The cross injection in a supersonic flow is an issue encountered in several aerodynamic applications such as fuel injection in scramjet combustor, missile control, drag reduction and thrust vector control. In a recent work, an analytical model has been presented to calculate the fluidic thrust vectoring performance for a supersonic axisymmetric nozzle. The model is able to take into account both the injected gas thermodynamic properties and the geometrical nozzle characteristics. The analytical model has been successfully validated following the cold air flow experimental analysis, in the case of fluidic thrust vectoring applied to conical nozzle. The aim of this work is to show how far the injected gas thermodynamic properties, different from that of the nozzle main flow, could influence the fluidic thrust vectorization parameters. In this work, the experimental performance of the fluidic thrust vectoring concept, using numbers of gases as injectant, has been qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. Schlieren visualization, force balance and wall pressure measurements were used in the case of a truncated ideal contour nozzle. The experimental results are compared to the numerical and analytical findings. Performance analysis are conducted and basic conclusions are drawn in terms of thermodynamic gas properties effect on the fluidic thrust vector system. The primary effect was related to the gas molecular weight and its specific heat ratio product. It is observed that for fixed injection conditions, the vectoring angle is higher when the injected gas molecular weight and specific heat ratio product is less than that of the primary gas. For a given mission of the launcher, it can be concluded that the mass of the embedded gas, used for the fluidic vectorization system, can be significantly reduced, depending on its molecular weight and specific heat ratio. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.