Numerical Investigation on Hybrid Rocket Motors with Star-Segmented Rotation Grain

Abstract

A novel fuel grain configuration comprising two star-segmented grains is proposed. The effect of the rotation, mid-chamber length, and segmented position on the fuel regression rate and the combustion efficiency in hybrid rocket motors with star-segmented grains is investigated in this paper. To this end, 90% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) are selected as the propellant combination in this research. Three-dimensional numerical simulations of the star-segmented grain configuration are conducted. A firing test of a lab-scale hybrid rocket motor was conducted to verify the accuracy of the numerical model, and the errors between simulation data and experimental results are no more than 4.5%. The case without segmented grain configuration is regarded as the base case. The simulation results demonstrate that the combustion flow field structure of the motor could be ameliorated by the segmented rotation grain configuration. Compared with the base case, the rotation of aft-section grain has little effect on the regression rate in the fore-section grain, while the average regression rate in aft-section grain increases, with a maximum increase of 25.04%. The combustion efficiency of the motor with the segmented rotation grain configuration is higher than the base case. Compared with the base case, the combustion efficiency of segmented rotation grain case with mid-chamber length 40 mm and segmented position of 1/2 is raised by 4.06%. The average fuel regression rate and the combustion efficiency of hybrid rocket motors with segmented rotation grains are higher than those in the base case during the entire period of operation, and the combustion efficiency is increased by 1.40–4.21% during the motor operation. The research findings of this paper can provide valuable guidance for the performance improvement of hybrid rocket motors with star grain.