• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.112-118
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• 2019

The development of an underwater rocket propulsion system was described in this paper. Throttle able liquid propellant and hybrid rocket propulsion systems were selected for underwater propulsion. A subscale liquid rocket combustion chamber and it's portable stand were developed and their applicability was examined. 1.5-ton.f and 1.8-ton.f hybrid rockets were developed for underwater applications. The test results indicated that the 18-ton.f hybrid rocket fully complies to the performance and underwater cruise stability requirements; thus, its development was concluded to be successfully complete.

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

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.507-510
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• 2009

The small size of hybrid rocket using PE-$LN_2O$ was designed, constructed and launched for a development basic technology of Hybrid rocket vehicle. The hybrid engine ignition system was designed with valve system using external actuator and confirmed working without any fault. To design fuel grain an internal ballistics design was carried out, and to estimate rockets flight path an external ballistics analysis was carried out. So the rocket was designed and constructed, and the launch test proves that hybrid rocket's design was suitable. The hybrid rocket(weight : 9kg, diameter : 110 mm, height : 1.7 m) was launched successfully. But parachute was deployed on mid-flight and the mission could not finish its purposed flight. Some of problems were found in this activity but next launch vehicle will be improved.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.48-56
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• 2009

The auto-ignition tests of hybrid rockets with the concentrated hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer were presented. Auto-ignition was successfully demonstrated by injecting decomposed gases from $H_2O_2$ into paraffin or polyethylene fuels. In addition, restart and instant ignition were realized with this rocket. For stable combustion, a higher $L^*$ value was required for the paraffin combustion compared with PE. On the other hand, much faster response time was demonstrated in case of a paraffin, which was 13 and 30 ms at ignition delay and rise time respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.499-502
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• 2009

The auto-ignition tests of hybrid rockets with the concentrated hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer were presented. Auto-ignition, restartability, and instant ignition were successfully demonstrated by injecting decomposed gases from $H_2O_2$ into paraffin or polyethylene fuels. In addition, much faster response time was demonstrated in case of a paraffin, which was 13 and 30 ms at ignition delay and rise time respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.370-373
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• 2007

In this study, a hybrid rocket motor with separable and detachable oxidizer tank from combustion chamber is developed. Initially, the measured thrust of the motor showed about 30% of the design thrust since the oxidizer supply was not enough. In order to solve this problem, application is made to expand the orifice diameter of oxidizer injector empirically, so that the mass flow rate of oxidizer was improved. The improved performance was about 60% of design thrust, 18kgf, and thrust-to-weight ratio was reasonable, compared with other sounding rockets.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.281-296
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• 2017

The axial-injection end-burning hybrid rocket proposed twenty years ago by the authors recently recaptured the attention of researchers for its virtues such as no ${\zeta}$ (oxidizer to fuel mass ratio) shift during firing and good throttling characteristics. This paper is the first report verifying these virtues using a laboratory scale motor. There are several requirements for realizing this type of hybrid rocket: 1) high fuel filling rate for obtaining an optimal ${\zeta}$; 2) small port intervals for increasing port merging rate; 3) ports arrayed across the entire fuel section. Because these requirements could not be satisfied by common manufacturing methods, no previous researchers have conducted experiments with this kind of hybrid rocket. Recent advances in high accuracy 3D printing now allow for fuel to be produced that meets these three requirements. The fuel grains used in this study were produced by a high precision light polymerized 3D printer. Each grain consisted of an array of 0.3 mm diameter ports for a fuel filling rate of 98% .The authors conducted several firing tests with various oxidizer mass flow rates and chamber pressures, and analysed the results, including ${\zeta}$ history, using a new reconstruction technique. The results show that ${\zeta}$ remains almost constant throughout tests of varying oxidizer mass flow rates, and that regression rate in the axial direction is a nearly linear function of chamber pressure with a pressure exponent of 0.996.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.398-404
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• 2007

In this paper, thermal characteristics of a nitrous oxide ($N_2O$) catalytic reactor with packed-bed geometry are theoretically and numerically investigated. Several researchers experimentally presented that catalytic decomposition of $N_2O$ in a packed bed generates about 82kJ/mole in the exothermic reaction. Based on the results they have studied the catalytic decomposition of $N_2O$ in a packed bed to use it not only as a mono-propellant thrust for small satellites but also as an igniter system for hybrid rockets. So we aim to identify important parameters existing in an $N_2O$ packed-bed geometry, and to clarify its critical effect on thermal characteristics of the catalytic igniter using a porous medium approach.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.273-289
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• 2014

Accuracy of a reconstruction technique assuming a constant characteristic exhaust velocity ($c^*$) efficiency for reducing hybrid rocket firing test data was examined experimentally. To avoid the difficulty arising from a number of complex chemical equilibrium calculations, a simple approximate expression of theoretical $c^*$ as a function of the oxidizer to fuel ratio (${\xi}$) and the chamber pressure was developed. A series of static firing tests with the same test conditions except burning duration revealed that the error in the calculated fuel consumption decreases with increasing firing duration, showing that the error mainly comes from the ignition and shutdown transients. The present reconstruction technique obtains ${\xi}$ by solving an equation between theoretical and experimental $c^*$ values. A difficulty arises when multiple solutions of ${\xi}$ exists. In the PMMA-LOX combination, a ${\xi}$ range of 0.6 to 1.0 corresponds to this case. The definition of $c^*$ efficiency necessary to be used in this reconstruction technique is different from a $c^*$ efficiency obtained by a general method. Because the $c^*$ efficiency obtained by average chamber pressure and ${\xi}$ includes the $c^*$ loss due to the ${\xi}$ shift, it can be below unity even when the combustion gas keeps complete mixing and chemical equilibrium during the entire period of a firing. Therefore, the $c^*$ efficiency obtained in the present reconstruction technique is superior to the $c^*$ efficiency obtained by the general method to evaluate the degree of completion of the mixing and chemical reaction in the combustion chamber.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.43 no.7
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• pp.593-600
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• 2015

In this study, a combined hybrid rocket system is newly introduced which has characteristics of both gas generators and afterburner type hybrid rockets. In particular, a combined gas generator utilizing solid fuel and liquid/gas oxidizer was designed as a primary combustor of the system. Combustion tests were carried out with various equivalence ratio affected by parameters such as fuel length, oxidizer flow rate, fuel port diameter and fuel type. In general, fuel-rich gas generator produces low combustion gas temperature to meet the temperature requirement and the target temperature was transiently set less than 1600 K. Since it was found that controlling parameters showed limited effects on the change of equivalence ratio, mixture of $O_2$ and $N_2$ as an oxidizer was additionally introduced. As a result, a combined gas generator successfully produced combustion gas temperature of less than 1600 K Future studies will carry out more combustion tests to attain fuel-rich combustion gas temperature less than 1200 K, which was a temperature requirement of a gas generator system in the previous studies.