• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.50-57
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• 2014

A ground hot-firing test (HFT) was conducted to take out the optimal design configurations for the thrust chamber of 70 N-class liquid rocket engine under development. Monopropellant grade (purity: ${\geq}98.5%$) hydrazine was adopted as a propellant for the HFT, and three kinds of thrust chambers having characteristic lengths ($L^*$) of 2.79, 2.95, and 3.13 m were selected for their performance evaluation. It is revealed through the test and evaluation that the increase of the $L^*$ leads to a performance degradation in the test condition specified, and pulse response performance of the development model shows superior characteristics to commercialized hydrazine thrusters.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.54-61
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• 2004

Miniaturization of subsystems including propulsion systems is recent trends in spacecraft technology. Small space vehicle propulsion is not only a technological challenge of a scaling system down, but also a combination of fundamental flow/combustion constraints. In this paper, physical constraints of micronozzle for cold gas micro-thruster are reviewed and discussed. Method to measure small thrust are also described.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.61-64
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• 2003

A comprehensive understanding is given for the hot-firing test results, which were obtained throughout the verification program of mono-propellant hydrazine thrusters producing 0.95 lbf (4.2 Newtons) of nominal steady-state thrust at an inlet pressure of 350 psia (2.41 ㎫). The scrutiny is made in terms of thrust and temperature behavior of steady state firing mode at the given propellant injection pressures of 400, 250, 100, and 50 psi. Engineering philosophy of data measurement and reduction is shortly mentioned, too.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.39 no.12
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• pp.1133-1140
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• 2011

Current design process for the Hall effect thruster has relied on expensive experimental method based on the limited historical data. In this study, a proper design space for the Hall effect thruster is chosen and associated design space exploration is conducted based on a recently proposed numerical method in order to improve current design process. According to the results of the design space exploration, performance envelope is determined for the given design space and the correlations between performance metrics are analyzed. Further analysis shows that main factors in performances for the Hall effect thruster are the anode mass flow rate and the discharge voltage.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.311-317
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• 2015

This paper describes how to apply one-dimensional simulation to predict unsteady state characteristics of the cold-gas pintle thruster. Mass flow rate, chamber pressure, and nozzle exit pressure are key parameters for thrust control. Chamber pressure rose and fell monotonously with the pintle stroke variation, while thrust variation was different from chamber pressure variation. During the forward pintle stroke operation, the thrust value tended to decrease initially and returned to increase when pintle speed and chamber free volume exceed some specified value. Even though one-dimensional simulation has the limitations to predict unsteady state characteristics, it is still useful for initial performance assessment of various thrusters which adopt an altitude compensation nozzle such as a dual-bell nozzle, prior to experiment or numerical analysis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.281-285
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• 2007

The flow characteristics in the thruster should be analyzed considering its geometry and the pressure ratio to estimate its performance and etc. This paper suggests the computational result of an axisymmetric real nozzle for the altitude control of a satellite to find out the application limit that the assumption of continuum mechanics holds. The steady non-reacted compressible flow field in the unstructured grid system is computed and analyzed with varying the environmental pressure (or the degree of vacuum) under the fixed pressure ratio in a real thruster of which the area ratio of exit to throat is 56. The assumption of the continuum mechanics is not approved when the environmental pressure is reduced less than $10^{-3}$ atm.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.93-99
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• 2003

The determination of thrust is essential in design and evaluation of a hypersonic airbreathing propulsion device. Conventional methods to determine the thrust is using thrust stand or force measurement system. However, these conventional methos are not applicable to the case where thrusts stands are impractical, such as free jet testing of engines, and model combustor. For this reason, the thrust determination method from measured pitot pressure is considered and validated. Validation of thrust determination from pitot pressures can be achieved by comparing the actual thrust from thrust stand. For validation purpose, a small-scale supersonic wind tunnel is installed on the thrust stand. Thrusts are measured while pressures are measured simulaneously. Then, the thrust from pitot pressure measurements are compared with the measured thrust and theoretical thrusts.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.401-405
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• 2017

Continuous variable thrusters require precise thrust control to change the position or attitude of the aircraft and to control the pressure inside the combustion chamber. For this purpose, the thrust is adjusted by moving the pintle structure near the nozzle neck inside the combustion chamber by moving the pintle structure forward and backward, and the actuator is used to move the pintle structure. In this paper, we developed a actuator system for continuous variable thruster and load test system to simulate the load under operating conditions. Also, the performance test of the actuator was performed using the developed load test system

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2013

A liquid-monopropellant hydrazine thruster has several outstanding advantages such as relatively-simple structure, long/stable propellant storability, clean exhaust products, and so on. Therefore hydrazine thruster has such a wide application as orbit and attitude control system (ACS) for space vehicles. A hydrazine thruster with the medium-level thrust to be used in the ACS of space launch vehicles (SLV) has been developed, and its ground firing test result is presented in terms of thrust, impulse bit, temperature, and chamber pressure. It is verified through the performance test that the response and repeatability of thrust are very excellent, and the thrust efficiencies compared to its ideal requirement are larger than 93%.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.419-424
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• 2009

A Xenon feed system has been developed for a 300 W Hall-effect thruster intended for orbit maintenance of small satellite. The system can store about 2 kg of xenon gas at 150 bar and is capable of controlling the mass flow rate of the gas at 0.5 SCCM resolution. The performance of the system is verified with a laboratory experiment. It is confirmed that the operation of the feed system is successful at a pressure level of $1.0{\times}10^{-6}$ torr in the vacuum chamber.