Nonlinear Rocket Motor Stability Computations
One of the first carefully controlled and fully instrumented experimental studies of solid rocket combustion instability was that carried out at the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1959 by W.G. Brownlee under the direction of Professor F.E.Marble. Over 400 test firings of case-bonded motors similar in design to modern tactical rockets were conducted. A smokeless propellant formulation (T-17, polysulfide/AP) was utilized in all tests; remarkable reproducibility of the observed oscillatory behavior was achieved. The motors exhibited the transverse mode form of instability with classical nonlinear features such as a limit cycle and large mean pressure shift; the instabilities arose naturally without pulsing. This data set has long been considered the ultimate test for any proposed theoretical model of combustion instability. Recent analytical work has illuminated the nonlinear mechanisms that lead to the mean pressure rise (DC shift) and to amplitude limiting. Thus, the Brownlee-Marble data provides an excellent opportunity to subject these new results to a rigorous test of validity.The objectives are to identify possible errors or omissions in the modeling, and to improve the general understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms. Numerical evaluations using the new theory are enabled by the availability of high-quality T-burner response function measurements of the T-17 propellant carried out by E. H. Perry in his doctoral research at Caltech. A combination of this data with the new theory illuminates the origins of all of the key features in the Brownlee data set. This is accomplished without invoking unsupportable mechanisms such as velocity coupling and nonlinear combustion response,which have limited defensible theoretical or experimental bases.
Gary A.Flandro
University of Tennessee Space Institute, Tullahoma, TN, 37388
国际会议
昆明
英文
135-155
2006-09-18（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）