| Abstract |
Particle Dynamics & Combustion in Solid Rocket Motors. The effort to model the combustion and two phase flow processes within solid rocket motors (SRMs) has been hampered by the lack of direct observation of the processes taking place inside the motors. Highly aluminized propellants, in particular, have proved impenetrable, both literally and figuratively, with respect to gathering this data, since the high temperatures and extremely luminous, opaque combustion products make direct observation difficult. Processes of interest for modeling include aluminum/alumina particle combustion and 2-phase flow dynamics such as particle-particle collision, coalescence, wall impingement, deformation and breakup. X-rays have been used previously to verify slag accumulation and ejection, as well as other relatively macro-scale processes, but lacked the resolution to track particle formation and path. It is hoped that improvements over the past several decades in X-ray sources and detectors can provide direct in situ observation of particle trajectories, dynamic processes and velocity vector data critical to anchoring predictive codes and models. |
