COMBUSTION CHARACTERISTICS OF A MICRO-SOLID PROPELLANT ROCKET ARRAY THRUSTER

  • Kazuyuki Kondo (Department of Mechatronics and Precision Engineering, Tohoku University) ;
  • Shuji Tanaka (Department of Mechatronics and Precision Engineering, Tohoku University) ;
  • Hiroto Habu (The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) ;
  • Tokudome, Shin-ichiro (The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) ;
  • Keiichi Hori (The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) ;
  • Hirobumi Saito (The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) ;
  • Akihito Itoh (Nichiyu Giken Kogyo Co., Lt) ;
  • Masashi Watanabe (Nichiyu Giken Kogyo Co., Lt) ;
  • Masayoshi Esashi (New Industry Creation Hatchery Center (NICHe), Tohoku University)
  • 발행 : 2004.03.01

초록

We are developing a micro-solid propellant rocket array thruster for simple attitude control of a 10 kg class micro-spacecraft. The prototype has ø 0.8 mm solid propellant micro-rockets arrayed at a pitch of 1.2 mm on a 22 x 22 mm substrate. In previous studies, an impulse thrust of 4.6 x 10$^{-4}$ Ns was obtained in vacuum, but we found the problems of unacceptably low ignition success rate and incomplete combustion. This paper describes experiments to improve the ignition rate. In order to achieve this goal, we tried to solidify paste-like ignition aid (RK) on the ignition heaters with strong adhesion. To make the paste-like RK, isoamyl acetate was added to RK powder. We tested 9 rockets, but only 2 rockets were ignited with huge ignition energy. This is because the heat con-duction between the ignition heater and the RK was too low to ignite the RK, since dried RK had a lot of pores. Also, a large cavity was sometimes found just above the ignition heater.

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