A Computational and Analytical Study into the Use of Counter-Flow Fluidic Thrust Vectoring Nozzle for Small Gas Turbine Engines
This paper provides an understanding of counter-flow fluidic thrust vectoring, in the presence of the secondary air vacuum, applied to the exhaust nozzle of a micro-jet engine. An analytical and numerical study is performed here on a divergent collar surface adjacent to the cylindrical exhaust duct system. The vectoring angle is controlled by manipulating the momentum flux through a vacuum gap that is located on a circle concentric to the main nozzle. Three dimensional numerical simulations are conducted by utilizing a computational fluid dynamics model with two-equation standard k-ε turbulence model to study the pressure and velocity distribution of internal flow and nozzle geometry. Moreover, an analytical validation is carried out based on the known mathematical form of the governing equations of fluid dynamics over the sinusoidal wall. It is shown that the analytical results are in good agreement with numerical simulations, which also show that the pressure coefficient over the collar surface has the same trend as given by computational simulation. Similarly, the results of the numerical method are also verified against experimental results that were approved by previous research in area of numerical model for co-flow fluidic thrust vectoring technique.