Altitude compensating nozzle

An altitude compensating nozzle is a class of rocket engine nozzles that are designed to operate efficiently
across a wide range of altitudes.

Contents
Conventional designs
Altitude-compensating nozzles
Other methods for altitude compensation
References

Conventional designs
The basic concept of any engine bell is to efficiently direct the flow of exhaust gases from the rocket engine
into one direction. The exhaust, a high-temperature mix of gases, has an effectively random momentum
distribution, and if it is allowed to escape in that form, only a small part of the flow will be moving in the
correct direction to contribute to forward thrust.

An engine bell works by confining the sideways flow of the gases, creating a local area of increased pressure
with a region of lower pressure "below it". This causes the gases to preferentially flow in the direction of
decreasing pressure. By careful design the engine bell grows wider so that the pressure decreases in such a
way that by the time the exhaust flow has reached the exit of the bell, it is traveling almost completely
rearward, maximizing thrust.

The problem with the conventional approach is that the outside air pressure also contributes to confining the
flow of the exhaust gases. At any given altitude, which is to say, at any given ambient air pressure, the bell can
be designed to be nearly "perfect," but that same bell will not be perfect at other pressures, or altitudes. Thus,
as a rocket climbs through the atmosphere its efficiency, and thus thrust, changes fairly dramatically, often as
much as 30%.

Altitude-compensating nozzles
Altitude compensating nozzles address this loss of efficiency by changing the shape or volume of the rocket
nozzle as the rocket climbs through the atmosphere. There are a wide variety of designs that achieve this goal,
with the aerospike being perhaps the most studied among them.

Aerospike engine
Plug nozzle
Expanding nozzle
Single expansion ramp nozzle
Stepped nozzle
Expansion deflection nozzle
Nozzle extension
Other methods for altitude compensation
Multistage rocket
Tripropellant rocket

References
1. Huzel, D. K.; Huang, D. H. (1971). NASA SP-125, Design of
Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines (2nd ed.). NASA.

Nozzles can be (top to bottom):

1. Underexpanded
2. Ambient
3. Overexpanded
4. Grossly overexpanded
If under or overexpanded then
loss of efficiency occurs. Grossly
overexpanded nozzles have
improved efficiency, but the
exhaust jet is unstable.
Conventional nozzles become
progressively more
underexpanded as they gain
altitude.[1]

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This page was last edited on 25 December 2020, at 15:20 (UTC).

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