Analysis of Heat Transfer and Optimum Structural Design for Cooling Channel of Supersonic Nozzle

The purpose of this study is optimum structural design for cooling channel of supersonic nozzle for rockets. Nowadays. there are two types of structure of cooling system for supersonic nozzle. One is using cooling pipe around the supersonic nozzle for cooling. The other is making cooling channel around the supersonic nozzle for cooling. Later case does not need brazing. And the advantage of later case is using copper of cooling channel. Copper has high coefficient of thermal conductivity. Later case is able to be made by cast. So, production run for cooling system of supersonic nozzle is shorter than that for the former case. Although reliability of the later case is higher than that for the former case, because of no brazing, mass of the later case is heavier than that of the former case. Then, it is needed that mass of the later case will be reduced with optimum structural design. We chose the later case and do optimum structural design by using two softwares, fluid analysis software FLUENT and structure analysis software NASTRAN. The rockets are able to load more payloads by optimum structural design. Thereby we are able to decrease per unit weight cost to lunch rockets.