Cooling system design for an upper-stage aerospike

Aerospike nozzles have proven to be an efficient solution capable of yielding high performance in a wide range of chamber to-ambient pressure ratio values with respect to conventional bell counterparts. However, despite the different design configurations proposed over the years, the thermal management has been one of the most challenging tasks to accomplish, especially for annular configurations. In the present work, a streamlined methodology is followed to find a possible design of a dual regenerative cooling system for an annular plug nozzle. The cooling system performance is then analyzed and critically discussed through conjugate heat transfer simulations.