Numerical Simulation of Multiphase Flows in Solid Rocket Motors Nozzles

In this work, we discuss a CFD model to investigate two-phase flows within solid rocket motors nozzles. An Eulerian-Eulerian model able to deal with polydispersion is validated against two test cases present in literature in order to verify the model capability to recover the crucial multiphase flows features and to assess performances estimation. Numerical simulations are performed on Zefiro 9A nozzle, third stage of the Vega launcher, with the aim to evaluate the influence of key-features, like particles dimension, polydispersion, and nozzle geometry, have on the two-phase losses. Numerical results are then compared with experimental data, showing the capability of the model to represent, with good correlation, the overall performance of the motor.