Rocket Booster Separation

Many heavy lift rockets require the addition of external boosters to add the required thrust needed to deliver their payloads to the correct orbit. Once the boosters fuel supply has been exhausted, they are typically jettisoned to reduce the mass of the rocket, in turn lessening overall fuel requirements.​ Similar to store separations, it is important to understand how the boosters will move and interact with the nozzle exhaust plume of the main vehicle.

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For this simulation,  a generic heavy lift rocket and twin booster configuration was modeled in SolidWorks. A body fitted mesh for each component (booster, main vehicle), was created using the Fluent meshing tool. The transient separation process was simulated using an overset method in Ansys Fluent.