From design to additive manufacturing: Advancing a LOX/Methane clustered aerospike engine segment towards experimental validation

A 3-kilonewton segment of a clustered aerospike engine for sea-level testing is developed within the ESAfunded THOMAS project. The focus lies on the design methodology of the whole nozzle, especially noncircular exits of internal expansion nozzle modules, the transition of the flow to the spike surface and the flow interaction. Subsequently, the design for the test specimen is derived, of which the main components are constructed with the copper alloy CuCr1Zr using additive manufacturing. The corresponding test plan for the upcoming verification test campaign is presented, which gives an insight into the approach to measure heat load, surface pressure distribution and flow phenomena analysis in such complex flow regime.