Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Performance Study Of Post-Processed Additively Manufactured Low Thrust Nozzles, Tyler W. Gerhold

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores metal post-processing techniques to effectively reduce the large anomalous protrusions found in small additively manufactured low thrust rocket nozzles. Research has found that nozzles of this kind can experience losses in thrust of over 40%. Analytic theory of adiabatic nozzle flow with viscous losses for additively manufactured nozzles does not align with what has been found when tested experimentally. Compressible flow losses, such as shock wave formation inside the nozzle diverging cone, are likely the leading causes of such loss. Reduction in nozzle irregularities can likely yield results seen in analytic theory with similar performance to traditional …