I am quite confused for my sugar propellant rocket nozzle. I have designed a CD nozzle by hit and trial method. It worked but produced so less amount of thrust .I have used 2.3 kg propellant which gave 220 newton thrust only. I m not sure about chocking in my nozzle. Since I haven't calculated chamber pressure. so I can't say about my nozzle pressure ratio is below critical pressure ratio or not. Is there any way to know whether I had chocked flow or not? or Is there way to calculate the throat area for chock flow with just knowing the dimensions of combustion chamber and propellant used? I will be really thankful the answer.
1 Answer
It's not very scientifical, but for candy fuel engines I built when I was younger, I used simple formula to compute area of the nozzle (An) from area of engine (internal diameter) (Ae):
An = Ae / K
or for radiuses:
Rn = sqrt(Re^2 / K)
or for diameters:
Dn = 2 * sqrt((De/2)^2 / K)
for candy fuels, K of around 100 worked for me.
So for example if you have engine with internal diameter of 30mm, for K=100 you should use nozzle with diameter of 2 * sqrt(15^2 / 100) = 3mm
Assuming simple "paper tube filled with fuel and then capped by plaster/wood nozzle" construction.