Combustion of liquid nitromethane and RK315A was experimentally studied in a meso-scale combustor with a volume of 108 cubic mm and diameter of 5 mm. The meso-scale combustor utilized a vortex combustion concept, which has been demonstrated to be useful for stabilizing combustion of gaseous hydrocarbon air mixtures in small volumes. The monopropellants were injected tangentially from the backend of the cylindrical combustor and the combustion products exited the chamber ...
A meso/micro scale liquid propellant thruster is being developed for small spacecraft. In this thruster, the liquid propellant was injected directly into the chamber tangentially along the combustor wall. Heat feedback from the flame, once ignited, decomposed and gasified the liquid propellant. The gasification process of the propellant produced a voflex flow in the combustor, which stabilized the gas- phase flame. Modeling studies with gas-phase injection of reactants have shown ...
The current effort involves four tasks which address, respectively, (1) the development of a fiber-optic probe for fuel-air ratio measurements, (2) a study of combustion instability using laser-based diagnostics in a high pressure, high temperature flow reactor, (3) the development of analytical and numerical modeling capabilities for describing combustion instability which will be validated against experimental data, and (4) the preparation of a literature survey and establishment of a data ...
Reports by Author
