• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.47 no.9
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• pp.658-664
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• 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 of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.78-84
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• 2020

The performance of pintle thruster is analyzed by using the pintle thruster performance analysis model which integrating the element models introduced in Part I. To verify the performance analysis, the results of the developed program are compared with the experimental data of kerosene/hydrogen peroxide liquid pintle thrusters. Based on the results, the characteristics of the pintle thruster are analyzed. The sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the effect of thruster shape and operation parameters on performance characteristics using both OAT and scatter plot methods. The four performance parameters such as droplet diameter, film flow rate, O/F ratio, and nozzle throat diameter are evaluated to investigate their effects on characteristic speed, combustor pressure, and specific thrust.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.69-77
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• 2020

A quasi one-dimensional multi-phase reaction flow analysis code is developed for the performance analysis of liquid pintle thrusters. Unsteady flow field, droplet evaporation, finite reaction and film cooling models are composed as the major models of the performance analysis. The droplet vaporization takes account of Abramzon's vaporization model, and the combustion employs a flamelet model based on detail chemical reactions. Shine's model is applied for the film cooling calculation. To verify each model, the Sod shock tube, single droplet vaporization, kerosene droplets combustion, and film length are evaluated.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.45-52
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• 2021

A hot-firing test was conducted using gaseous-methane and gaseous-oxygen under highly fuel-rich condition as a prior study for the development of a liquid propellant small rocket engine. To compare combustion characteristics for various equivalence ratios, the oxygen flow rate was set to 12 g/s and the methane flow rate was changed according to the equivalence ratio. As a result, it was observed that the steady-state characteristic velocity obtained during the hot-firing test steeply rose in the latter part of each test: the difference between the former and the latter steady value was enhanced overall in proportion to the equivalence ratio. Based on this, the equivalence ratio range depending on the variational characteristics of the characteristic velocity could be divided into three combustion regimes.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2023

Hypergolic propellants, which can ignite themselves without an ignition source, are difficult to handle due to their corrosiveness and toxicity. Therefore, it is necessary to develop green hypergolic propellants with little or no toxicity. In this study, basic research on green hypergolic ignition propellants was conducted. With 95% hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer and CNU_HGFv1 as a fuel, ignition and combustion characteristics of propellants were evaluated through a drop test, an ignition test, and a combustion test. As a result of the drop test, the ignition delay time was 9.7 ms. It was 27 ms in the ignition test, which was fast enough to be used as a propellant. As a result of the combustion test, a combustion efficiency of 95.4~98.1% was achieved at about 11.7 bar. It was confirmed that fast and stable combustion was possible without hard start or combustion instability.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.275-283
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• 2013

An injector that uses methane gas ($CH_4$) and liquid oxygen ($LO_x$) as propellants was designed to verify the combustion characteristics of an engine that uses methane, which is one of the next-generation propellants. A swirl/shear coaxial-type injector was used, and flow analysis was performed using Fluent to determine the main design parameters of the injector. A hydraulic test was performed to understand the atomization and spray pattern characteristics of the injector. Next, a combustion test was performed at the design point to understand the ignition and combustion stability. Additional combustion tests were performed according to the O/F ratio to investigate the combustion characteristics and stabilities using the characteristic exhaust velocity ($C^*$) and fluctuation of the chamber pressure. The experimental results showed that the combustion efficiency was greater than 90%, and the pressure fluctuation was lower than 2% under all conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2021

POGO is a dynamic axial instability phenomenon that occurs in liquid-propelled rockets. As the natural frequencies of the fuselage and those of the propellant supply system become closer, the entire system will become unstable. To predict POGO, the propellant (oxidant and fuel) tank in the first stage is modeled as a shell element, and the remaining components, the engine and the upper part, are modeled as mass-spring, and structural analysis is performed. The transmission line model is used to predict the pressure and flow perturbation of the propellant supply system. In this paper, the closed-loop transfer function is constructed by integrating the fuselage structure and fluid modeling as described above. The pogo suppressor consists of a branch pipe and an accumulator that absorbs pressure fluctuations in a passive manner and is located in the middle of the propellant supply system. The design parameters for its design optimization to suppress the decay phenomenon are set as the diameter, length of the branch pipe, and accumulator. Multiple-objective function optimization is performed by setting the energy minimization of the closed loop transfer function in terms of to the mass of the pogo suppressor and that of the propellant as the objective function.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.8
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• pp.759-765
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• 2013

This study proposes the characteristics of the pressure drop in a compressible fluid through porous media for application to a porous injector in a liquid rocket engine in order to improve the uniformity of the drop size distribution and the mixing performance of shear coaxial injectors. The fluid through the porous media is a Non-Darcy flow that shows a Nonlinear relation between the pressure drop and the velocity at high speed and high mass flow rate. The pressure drop of the Non-Darcy flow can be derived using the Forchheimer equation that includes the losses of viscous and inertia resistance. The permeability and Ergun coefficient represented as a function of the pressure drop and pore size can be applied to the porous injector, where the fluid through the porous media is compressible. A generalized correlation between the pressure drop in relation to the pore size was derived.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.45 no.12
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• pp.1069-1075
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• 2017

With the recent development of space technology, the satellite market, especially the small satellite market, is growing globally. As the satellite market continues to grow, the launch vehicle market is also growing, and demand for low-cost launches is increasing. There are a number of options for low-cost launches, including development of engine that uses low-cost propellants, product and transportation cost savings, but the most effective way to reduce launch costs is to reuse the used launch vehicles. USA's Space Shuttle, a famous rocket as manned spacecraft, could be referred as the start of reusable launch vehicle. However, Space Shuttle had limited reusable parts and it was very expensive even though it is a reusable launch vehicle because of its low efficiency. In recent years, aiming at a real reusable launch vehicle, reusable launch vehicle for commercial purposes have been developed around USA's SpaceX and Blue Origin, and re-landing tests were successfully accomplished. In addition, SpaceX successfully did the re-using of first-stage launch vehicle that had been succeeded in re-landing already. In accordance with this trend, countries such as Europe and India are also concentrating on the study of reusable launch vehicles. Including Blue Origin, companies like Virgin Galactic and XCOR in the United States, are also trying to commercialize the same reusable technology as the private manned space tourism. Confirmation of these technology trends is essential, because the re-use technology could change the landscape of the global launch vehicle market.