Base heating and stage separation of launch vehicles

This paper presents the results of the experimental study carried out to address the issues of base heating and smooth separation of the stage of launch vehicles. The pressure at the base of a convergent-divergent circular nozzle, from which Mach 1.8 jet emanates, attached to an annular shroud of larger area is controlled by providing air vents on the shroud. On the shroud, vent holes were made at different azimuthal locations, to entrain the surrounding air mass at a higher pressure, p a, to increase the low-pressure, p b , at the base region, caused by the suction creating large-scale vortices formed owing to the sudden expansion of the jet emerging from the nozzle into the shroud. For different number and size of the vents on the shroud, the base pressure was measured. This measurement was done at five levels of overexpansion of the nozzle in the range from –64% to –58%. It is found that increase in vent area results in increase of base pressure, up to some limiting level of the area. Also, the increase of base pressure for the case of vents closer to the nozzle exit is found to be marginally more than the increase caused by vents at distances away from the nozzle exit. Increase of base pressure can be regarded as an advantage not only from base heating point of view but also from the point of view of deflection of the plume to the shroud wall for uniform melting of the pyro layer bonding the stages of the launch vehicle, leading to a smooth separation of the launch vehicle stages.