Study of Afterburning in Solid Rocket Booster Jet: Towards a Model for Afterburning in Large Eddy Simulations

This paper focuses on two decisive steps towards Large Eddy Simulation of a solid rocket booster jet. First, three-dimensional Large Eddy Simulations of a non-reactive booster jet including the nozzle were obtained at flight conditions of 20 km of altitude. A particularly long computational domain (400 nozzle exit diameters in the jet axial direction) was simulated, thanks to an innovative local time-stepping method via coupling multi instances of a fluid solver. The dynamics of the jet is analysed and comparison of the results with previous knowledge validates the simulations and confirms that this computational setup can be applied for Large Eddy Simulations of a reactive booster jet. The second part of this paper details the implementation of a simple method to study the hot plume chemistry. Despite its limitations, it is accurate enough to observe the various steps of the chemical mechanism and assess the effect of uncertainties of the rate parameters on chlorine reactions. It was also used to reduce the set of chemical reactions into a short scheme involving a minimum of species and having a limited impact on the physical time step of the Large Eddy Simulations.