Improved Mass Flow Rate Regulation Methods Based on Variable Frequency Control: A Case Study of Oxidizer Agent Weighing for Solid Propellants

Abstract

The feeding and weighing of oxidizer agents is the key process of solid rocket motor propellant preparation, and its accuracy directly affects the burning performance of solid rocket motors. At present, the existing multi-batch feeding methods have the problem of low accuracy and high time consumption of the oxidizer agent. In this paper, an improved mass flow rate regulation method based on variable frequency control is proposed to improve accuracy and reduce time consumption. The nonlinear variation process of the mass flow rate during the opening and closing process of the air-operated pinch valve is analyzed. The periodic opening and closing frequency of the air-operated pinch valve is introduced to establish the mathematical model of the mass flow rate and frequency, and then, the model parameters are obtained through the discrete element method. The plan of the method of variable frequency regulation and the frequency parameters were determined using the multi-objective optimization method. The experiments are carried out, and the results show that compared to the existing multi-batch feeding method, optimized with the improved mass flow rate regulation methods based on the variable frequency control method, improved the feeding and weighing accuracy by 0.37% and reduced time consumption by 25.6%.