Assessment of a Thrust Measurement System for Supersonic Nozzles

This paper presents a measurement system to assess the thrust produced by advanced aerospace propulsion nozzles. The system is able to evaluate all thrust components in the case of vectorized nozzles using three precision scales positioned at the base of the test rig. The scales are arranged in a 120-degree configuration to accurately reconstruct the thrust vector. A calibration of the thrust measurement system was carried out. Cold flow experiments using air as working fluid will be performed for a linear aerospike nozzle in di!erential throttling configurations. The measured forces are compared with those resulting from numerical simulations conducted on a nozzle model with the same geometry.