THERMAL-STRESS ANALYSIS OF A SOLID ROCKET MOTOR NOZZLE THROAT INSERT USING FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD

A finite element formulation is developed for the analysis of axisymme tric, transient, anisotropic heat conduction problem with the temperat ure dependant thermo-physical material properties of a graphite throat nozzle for the solid rocket motor. A standard Galerkin method using l inear triangular element is employed for the space discretization. The time integration is done using an implicit time marching scheme of th e first order differential equation. The convective heat transfer coef ficient is calculated using the Bartz correlation. A thermal stress an alysis is also carried out on the graphite throat of the nozzle using finite element method with two degrees of freedom. The developed compu ter codes for this purpose are validated with known analytical solutio n and available ANSYS code.