Optimization of flow properties of hypergolic fuels for hybrid propulsion systems

进入空间和亚轨道飞行对科学和工业的广泛领域至关重要。新技术的出现使新的行动者能够开发更小和成本效益更高的卫星来执行同样的任务。然而，由于缺乏可操作的专用发射装置，微型卫星通常被限制在作为与大型卫星一起发射的次要有效载荷。目前，航空航天领域的化学推进由两种火箭设计范式主导，其区别在于所使用的反应物的相态，一种情况下是固体，另一种情况下是液体或气体。我们的合作伙伴反应动力学实验室一直在开拓一种新型火箭推进技术，最近通过静态火灾测试进行了实验验证。混合火箭发动机，其中液体或气体氧化剂与固体燃料分开储存，可以在不影响性能的情况下带来安全方面的关键优势。当固体燃料橡胶用于混合火箭发动机的燃料基质时，与固体火箭相比，退化率非常低。这一缺点已部分地解决了引进的概念，固体燃料矩阵。预计这些发动机的燃烧效率将取决于熔化燃料的流动特性，但这种关系的特性尚待确定。这项研究将得到该基金的支持，其目的是确定熔融燃料流变特性对混合火箭发动机燃烧效率的影响。

Access to space and suborbital flights are of critical importance to a broad range of fields of science andindustry. The emergence of new technologies has allowed new actors to develop smaller and morecost-effective satellites to perform the same missions. However, due to the lack of operational dedicatedlaunchers, microsatellites are often constrained to launch as secondary payloads alongside larger satellites.Chemical propulsion in the aerospace sector is currently dominated by two rocket design paradigms,differentiated by the phases of the reactants used, solid in one case and either liquid of gaseous in the other.Our partner Reaction Dynamics Lab has been pioneering a novel type of rocket propulsion technology,experimentally demonstrated recently using a static fire test. Hybrid rocket engines, where liquid or gaseousoxidizer are stored separately from the solid fuel, can bring key advantages with regards to safety withoutcompromising performance. When solid fuels rubbers are used for the fuel matrix in hybrid rocket motors, theregression rate is very low compared to solid rockets. This drawback has been partially addressed by theintroduction of the concept of liquefying solid fuels matrix. It is anticipated that the combustion efficiency ofthese motord will depend on the flow properties of the melted fuel, but the characteristics of this relationshipremained to be identified. The investigation that will be supported by this grant is aimed at identifying theeffects of the melted fuel rheological properties on the combustion efficiency of hybrid rocket motors.