Rocket engine nozzle

Common card · No. 444802

A rocket engine nozzle is a propelling nozzle (usually of the de Laval type) used in a rocket engine to expand and accelerate combustion products to high supersonic velocities. Simply: propellants pressurized by either pumps or high pressure ullage gas to anywhere between two and several hundred atmospheres are injected into a combustion chamber to burn, and the combustion chamber leads into a nozzle which converts the energy contained in high pressure, high temperature combustion products into kinetic energy by accelerating the gas to high velocity and near-ambient pressure. The typical high level goal in nozzle design is to maximize its thrust coefficient C F {\displaystyle C_{F}} , which acts as a strong multiplier to the exhaust velocity inherent to the combustion chamber alone (its characteristic velocity c*, which is independent of nozzle design).

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