Open AccessExperimental investigation of star grains in dual thrust solid propellant motors
Author(s) -
Mostafa El-Naggar,
Hatem M. Belal,
H. M. Abdalla
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
iop conference series. materials science and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1757-899X
pISSN - 1757-8981
DOI - 10.1088/1757-899x/973/1/012001
Subject(s) - propellant , thrust , solid fuel rocket , aerospace engineering , materials science , propulsion , star (game theory) , acceleration , mechanics , rocket (weapon) , phase (matter) , phase transition , mechanical engineering , chamber pressure , physics , engineering , thermodynamics , classical mechanics , astrophysics , quantum mechanics
One of the great challenges in designing tactical solid missiles is to achieve high acceleration in the boost phase then maintaining constant speed during the sustain phase. This could be achieved by using a dual thrust solid-propellant rocket motor. Many of these tactical motors use a combination of star, tubular or finocyl grains to achieve this profile. The present study uses two tandem star grains with different design parameters and different transition geometry. Previous researches had consistently shown that the main advantage of star grain is the potential higher volumetric loading in addition to high tailorability. The pressure-time curve for the designed grains is calculated using a zero-dimensional internal ballistic module and a small-scale test motor is used to verify the calculated pressure-time curve. Different transition geometries are compared. Tapered transition is shown to give a comparable performance with the sharp transition with the advantage of higher volumetric loading.