• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
• /
• 2011.04a
• /
• pp.1-2
• /
• 2011

Hybrid rockets have lately attracted attention as a strong candidate of small, low cost, safe and reliable launch vehicles. A significant topic is that the first commercially sponsored space ship, SpaceShipOne vehicle chose a hybrid rocket. The main factors for the choice were safety of operation, system cost, quick turnaround, and thrust termination. In Japan, five universities including Hokkaido University and three private companies organized "Hybrid Rocket Research Group" from 1998 to 2002. Their main purpose was to downsize the cost and scale of rocket experiments. In 2002, UNISEC (University Space Engineering Consortium) and HASTIC (Hokkaido Aerospace Science and Technology Incubation Center) took over the educational and R&D rocket activities respectively and the research group dissolved. In 2008, JAXA/ISAS and eleven universities formed "Hybrid Rocket Research Working Group" as a subcommittee of the Steering Committee for Space Engineering in ISAS. Their goal is to demonstrate technical feasibility of lowcost and high frequency launches of nano/micro satellites into sun-synchronous orbits. Hybrid rockets use a combination of solid and liquid propellants. Usually the fuel is in a solid phase. A serious problem of hybrid rockets is the low regression rate of the solid fuel. In single port hybrids the low regression rate below 1 mm/s causes large L/D exceeding a hundred and small fuel loading ratio falling below 0.3. Multi-port hybrids are a typical solution to solve this problem. However, this solution is not the mainstream in Japan. Another approach is to use high regression rate fuels. For example, a fuel regression rate of 4 mm/s decreases L/D to around 10 and increases the loading ratio to around 0.75. Liquefying fuels such as paraffins are strong candidates for high regression fuels and subject of active research in Japan too. Nakagawa et al. in Tokai University employed EVA (Ethylene Vinyl Acetate) to modify viscosity of paraffin based fuels and investigated the effect of viscosity on regression rates. Wada et al. in Akita University employed LTP (Low melting ThermoPlastic) as another candidate of liquefying fuels and demonstrated high regression rates comparable to paraffin fuels. Hori et al. in JAXA/ISAS employed glycidylazide-poly(ethylene glycol) (GAP-PEG) copolymers as high regression rate fuels and modified the combustion characteristics by changing the PEG mixing ratio. Regression rate improvement by changing internal ballistics is another stream of research. The author proposed a new fuel configuration named "CAMUI" in 1998. CAMUI comes from an abbreviation of "cascaded multistage impinging-jet" meaning the distinctive flow field. A CAMUI type fuel grain consists of several cylindrical fuel blocks with two ports in axial direction. The port alignment shifts 90 degrees with each other to make jets out of ports impinge on the upstream end face of the downstream fuel block, resulting in intense heat transfer to the fuel. Yuasa et al. in Tokyo Metropolitan University employed swirling injection method and improved regression rates more than three times higher. However, regression rate distribution along the axis is not uniform due to the decay of the swirl strength. Aso et al. in Kyushu University employed multi-swirl injection to solve this problem. Combinations of swirling injection and paraffin based fuel have been tried and some results show very high regression rates exceeding ten times of conventional one. High fuel regression rates by new fuel, new internal ballistics, or combination of them require faster fuel-oxidizer mixing to maintain combustion efficiency. Nakagawa et al. succeeded to improve combustion efficiency of a paraffin-based fuel from 77% to 96% by a baffle plate. Another effective approach some researchers are trying is to use an aft-chamber to increase residence time. Better understanding of the new flow fields is necessary to reveal basic mechanisms of regression enhancement. Yuasa et al. visualized the combustion field in a swirling injection type motor. Nakagawa et al. observed boundary layer combustion of wax-based fuels. To understand detailed flow structures in swirling flow type hybrids, Sawada et al. (Tohoku Univ.), Teramoto et al. (Univ. of Tokyo), Shimada et al. (ISAS), and Tsuboi et al. (Kyushu Inst. Tech.) are trying to simulate the flow field numerically. Main challenges are turbulent reaction, stiffness due to low Mach number flow, fuel regression model, and other non-steady phenomena. Oshima et al. in Hokkaido University simulated CAMUI type flow fields and discussed correspondence relation between regression distribution of a burning surface and the vortex structure over the surface.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
• /
• v.3 no.4
• /
• pp.67-74
• /
• 1999

Problems created by supersonic jet impinging on solid objects or ground arise in a variety of situations. For example multi-stage rocket separation, deep-space docking, V/STOL aircraft, jet-engine exhaust, gas-turbine blade, terrestrial rocket launch, and so on. These impinging jet flows generally contain a complex structures. (mixed subsonic and supersonic regions, interacting shocks and expansion waves, regions of turbulent shear layer) This paper describes experimental works on the phenomena (surface pressure distribution, flow visualization) when underexpanded supersonic jets impinge on the perpendicular, inclined plate using a supersonic cold-(low system. The used supersonic nozzle is convergent-divergent type, exit Mach number 2, The maximum on the plate when it was inclined was much larger than perpendicular plate, owing to high pressure recoveries through multiple shocks. Surface pressure distribution as to underexpanded ratio showed similar patterns together.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2009.11a
• /
• pp.465-465
• /
• 2009

Wind power is one of the most reliable renewable energy sources and the installed wind turbine capacities are increasing radically every year. Although wind power has been favored by the public in general, the problem with the impact of wind turbine noise on people living in the vicinity of the turbines has been increased. Low noise wind turbine design is becoming more important as noise is spreading more adverse effect of wind turbine to public. This paper demonstrates the design of 10 kW class wind turbines, each of three blades, a rotor diameter 6.4m, a rated rotating speed 200 rpm and a rated wind speed 10 m/s. The optimized airfoil is dedicated for the 75% spanwise position because the dominant source of a wind turbine blade has been known as trailing edge noise from the outer 25% of the blade. Numerical computations are performed for incompressible flow and for Mach number at 0.145 and for Reynolds numbers at $1.02{\times}10^6$ with a lift performance, which is resistant to surface contamination and turbulence intensity. The objective in the low design process is to reduce noise emission, while sustaining high aerodynamic efficiency. Dominant broadband noise sources are predicted by semi-empirical formulas composed of the groundwork by Brooks et al. and Lowson associated with typical wind turbine operation conditions. During the airfoil redesign process, the aerodynamic performance is analyzed to minimize the wind turbine power loss. The results obtained from the design process show that the design method is capable of designing airfoils with reduced noise using a commercial 10 kW class wind turbine blade airfoil as a basis. The new optimized airfoil clearly indicates reduction of total SPL about 3 dB and higher aerodynamic performance.