Is there a way to calculate how rocket exhaust gas spreads out in empty space after leaving the rocket?

[Albertgauss]

TL;DR

Any way to calculate how rocket exhaust gas spreads out in empty space after leaving the rocketexhaust pipe?

I haven't found anything obvious about how rocket thrust gas particles would expand once they leave the thruster of the ship from which it is ejected. Inside the rocket would be the exploding gas, but outside the rocket the temperature would be ~ 3 Kelvin and zero pressure since outer space would be empty. I thought maybe there would be something similar to a jet exhaust particles expanding in upper atmosphere upon egress from the vehicle but I couldn't find anything there either. There seemed to be a lot of how heat thermodynamically expands once leaving a jet engine but nothing about how the actual gas atoms themselves spread out.

Just looking for something very basic here. Rocket fuel type? Whatever is available that people have used for this type of calculation as I don't know where to start on that, either.

 

[Frabjous]

There is a chapter on Expansion Processes in the book Liquid Propellant Rockets (1960).

 

[Albertgauss]

There is a chapter on Expansion Processes in the book Liquid Propellant Rockets (1960).

Who is the author(s) and maybe a jpeg image? There are, surprisingly, a whole bunch of books by that name. Plus, some of the books look expensive that have/contain that name, so if a reprint is available, that would be better.

 

[Frabjous]

Who is the author(s) and maybe a jpeg image? There are, surprisingly, a whole bunch of books by that name. Plus, some of the books look expensive that have/contain that name, so if a reprint is available, that would be better.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691626000/liquid-propellant-rockets
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&ref_=search_f_hp&tn=Liquid propellant rockets&an=Altman

In case your library has it, it should also be in the old series High Speed Aerodynamics and Jet Propulsion, but I do not know the volume.