Assessment of a Thrust Measurement System for Supersonic Nozzles

This paper presents a measurement system for assessing 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 has been carried out. Cold flow experiments using air as the working fluid will be performed for a linear aerospike nozzle in differential throttling configurations. The measured forces will be compared with the ones resulting from numerical simulations conducted on the same nozzle model.