• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
• /
• v.47 no.9
• /
• pp.658-664
• /
• 2019

In the development of the liquid rocket engine using the pintle injector, spray characteristics such as spray angle, droplet size, and distribution of the droplets are dominant parameters. Three different kind of multi hole type pintle tip and a continuous type pintle tip were designed. In the case of multi hole pintle tip, SMD result did not have a significant difference depending on the number of holes. In analysis with visualization images, however, the droplets were uniformly distributed as the number of holes increased. Liquid droplets from continuous type pintle tip were finely atomized and dispersed uniformly than those from multi-hole type pintle tip. In addition, the thrust control by adjusting the liquid injection area of the pintle is suitable for the continuous type, which is easier to face-shutoff rather than the multi hole type. The spray angle of each pintle tip according to TMR was measured to derive a specific tendency and corresponding empirical formula.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
• /
• v.48 no.9
• /
• pp.703-709
• /
• 2020

Pintle injector is known to have been adopted as injector of Lunar Module Descent Engine (LMDE) and contributed to success of the Apollo program and recently used in merlin engine. In this study, 500N Lab-Scale pintle injector thruster was manufactured and the combustion experiment with LOx/GCH4 was conducted. However, the proto-type thruster was showed some problems, such as low combustion efficiency and melting of pintle tip. To solve these problems, the flow guide in pintle tip was suggested through the CFD simulation. After addition of flow guide module, the combustion efficiency increased and pintle tip did not melt until the end of combustion.