Burning of Aluminized Solid Rocket Propellants: from Micrometric to Nanometric Fuel Size
A survey is offered of the present status of microaluminized propellants industrially used worldwide in most space applications, and also new directions are pointed out making profitable use of the nanoaluminized propellants meanwhile tested in advanced international laboratories. The survey is limited to formulations with inert binders. Different industrial- and research-type of solid rocket propellants, mainly but not only, of the family AP/Al/HTPB were experimentally analyzed at the Space Propulsion Laboratory of Politecnico di Milano. In general, they feature the same nominal composition but implement different grain size distributions of the oxidizer or metal fuel. The basic properties of all formulations were compared to that of a standard 68/18/14 propellant already certified for flight. In order to test their possible eligibility in terms of performance for future launchers, steady ballistic properties in terms of burning rate and flame structure were studied by a variety of experimental techniques ranging from high-speed and high resolution digital video recording to chemo-physical analyses of the solid combustion residues. Surprising differences were revealed in the flame structure of apparently similar formulations. In turn, this allowed shedding new light on the complex phenomena governing metallized solid rocket propellant burning and thus acquiring improved prediction capabilities of motor performance.
aluminized solid propellants burning agglomeration condensed residues space launchers motor performance
Luigi T. DE LUCA
SPLab, Politecnico di Milano, I-20156 Milan, Italy
国际会议
西安
英文
277-289
2007-10-23（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）