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Science and Technology of Energetic Materials

Vol.74, No.1 (2013)

Research paper

Ignition characteristics of metal particles for gas hybrid rockets
Koutarou Matsumoto, and Takuo Kuwahara
p.12-16

Abstract

Gas hybrid rockets burn a fuel rich hot gas and a liquid oxidizer. We selected N2O for the liquid oxidizer and Glycidyl Azide Polymer (GAP) propellant for the gas generator. Nitrous oxide has high enough vapor pressure to use selfpressurized liquid oxidizer. GAP is high energy material. The burning rate of the GAP propellant is high. However, the temperature of the mixture gas is low, because the fuel rich hot gas mixed with the liquid oxidizer. Therefore, it is thought that the combustion efficiency of the gas hybrid rocket is decreased. A method to increase the temperature of the mixture gas is the addition of metal particles to the GAP propellant. The addition of the metal particles increases the temperature of the fuel rich hot gas and mixture gas. The metal particles should ignite in the mixture gas. However, it is considered that the metal particles cannot ignite in the mixture gas because the metal particles are cooled by mixture gas. Therefore, we investigated ignition characteristics of the metal particles using two combustion type particles, which have gas-phase combustion and surface combustion. In the results, ignition delay time of the metal particles was shortened with increasing the temperature of N2O atmosphere, and the metal particles could ignite in the mixture gas.

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Keywords

gas hybrid rocket, nitrous oxide, ignition, zirconium, magnesium

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