Presence and properties of acoustic peaks near the nozzle of impinging rocket jets

Abstract

The presence and properties of acoustic peaks near the nozzle of impinging rocket jets have been investigated. Four jets at a Mach number of 3.1 impinging on a plate at a distance L = 15r0, 20r0, 25r0 and 30r0 from the nozzle, where r0 is the nozzle radius, have been computed using large-eddy simulations. In all cases, upstream-travelling pressure waves are generated by the jet impingement on the plate, with amplitudes decreasing with the nozzle-to-plate distance. The near-nozzle pressure spectra contain peaks, at frequencies not varying much with this distance. For L ≥ 20r0, the spectra are dominated by a low-frequency peak, whereas two additional high-frequency peaks emerge for L = 15r0. The low-frequency peak is associated with the azimuthal mode nθ = 0, whereas the two other ones are due to strong components for modes nθ ≥ 1. As for near-nozzle tones for free and impinging jets at lower Mach numbers, the peak frequencies fall close to the frequency bands of the upstream-propagating guided jet waves, showing a link between the peaks and the latter waves. Regarding the peak levels, they do not change significantly with the nozzle-to-plate distance for the low-frequency peak, but they decrease by 1.5 to 18 dB as the distance increases for the other peaks. Finally, for L ≥ 20r0, the near-nozzle peak frequency is close to that of the strongest shear-layer structures, indicating a connexion between the upstream noise and these structures. For L = 15r0, a shock-leakage mechanism of a near-plate shock is found to generate the upstream noise.