Investigation of Dual-Vortical-Flow Hybrid Rocket Engine without Flame Holding Mechanism. (11th March 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lai, A.; Chou, T.-H.; Wei, S.-S.; Lin, J.-W.; Wu, J.-S.; Chen, Y.-S.
• Other Names: Velazquez Angel Academic Editor.
• Is Part Of: International journal of aerospace engineering. Volume 2018(2018)
• Publication Date: 2018-03-11
• Subjects: Aerospace engineering -- Periodicals; 629.105
• DOI: 10.1155/2018/6513084
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1687-5966

Abstract

Abstract : A 250 kgf thrust hybrid rocket engine was designed, tested, and verified in this work. Due to the injection and flow pattern of this engine, this engine was named dual-vortical-flow engine. This propulsion system uses N2 O as oxidizer and HDPE as fuel. This engine was numerically investigated using a CFD tool that can handle reacting flow with finite-rate chemistry and coupled with the real-fluid model. The engine was further verified via a hot-fire test for 12 s. The ground I sp of the engine was 232 s and 221 s for numerical and hot-fire tests, respectively. An oscillation frequency with an order of 100 Hz was observed in both numerical and hot-fire tests with less than 5% of pressure oscillation. Swirling pattern on the fuel surface was also observed in both numerical and hot-fire test, which proves that this swirling dual-vortical-flow engine works exactly as designed. The averaged regression rate of the fuel surface was found to be 0.6~0.8 mm/s at the surface of disk walls and 1.5~1.7 mm/s at the surface of central core of the fuel grain.