History of Bell nozzles Bell nozzles provides an advantage of more efficiency and more compactness compared to the conical

nozzle for the same area ratio. For the same design parameters, bell nozzles provides less divergence loss at the exit as the exit angle of bell nozzle is less compared to conical nozzle. The main disadvantage of bell nozzle is it can only be applicable for liquid rocket engines because the solid and hybrid engines expel particles which would deteriorate the nozzle wall due to its low inflection angle. Design criteria of bell nozzles : Bell nozzle contours were designed by two methods basically, one is Method of characteristics and the other is by thrust optimized nozzles proposed by G.V.Rao. He has also approximated the thrust optimized nozzles by skewed parabolas and were used widely. For the thrust optimization method, the nozzle lengths were taken from the length corresponding to the same area ratio of a 15 degree conical nozzle. Bell nozzles work the best when they were designed for 75%-85% length of a conical nozzle. But for the former method MOC, the nozzle length and area ratios were not fixed

The bell or contour shape is designed to impart a large angle expansion for the gasses right after the throat. The nozzle is then curved back in to give a nearly straight flow of gas out the nozzle opening. The contour used is rather complex. The large expansion section near the throat causes expansion shock waves. The reversal of the slope to bring the exit to near zero degrees causes compression shock waves. A properly designed nozzle will have these two sets of shock waves coincide and cancel each other out.