• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.74-80
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• 2012

Past few years have seen the growing importance of micro shock tubes in various engineering applications like micro combution, micro propulsion, particle delivery systems. But in order to efficiently apply Micro Shock Tube to such areas require the detailed knowledge of shock characteristics and flow field inside a micro shock tube. Due to many factors such as boundary layer, low Reynolds number and high Knudsen number shock propagation inside micro shock tubes will be quite different from that of the well established macro shock tubes. In the present study, experimental studies were carried out on micro shock tubes of two diameters to investigate flow characteristics and shock propagation. Pressure values were measured at different locations inside the driven section. From the experimental values other parameters like shock velocity, shock strength were found and shock wave diagram was constructed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.37-46
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• 2013

Recent years have witnessed the use of micro shock tube in various engineering applications like micro combustion, micro propulsion, particle delivery systems etc. The flow characteristics occurring in the micro shock tube shows a considerable deviation from that of well established conventional macro shock tube due to very low Reynolds number and high Knudsen number effects. Also the diaphragm rupture process, which is considered to be instantaneous process in many of the conventional shock tubes, will be crucial for micro shock tubes in determining the near diaphragm flow field and shock formation. In the present study, an axi-symmetric CFD method has been applied to simulate the micro shock tube, with Maxwell's slip velocity and temperature jump boundary conditions. The effects of finite diaphragm rupture process on the flow field and the shock formation was investigated, in detail. The results show that the shock strength attenuates rapidly as it propagates through micro shock tubes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.36-40
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• 2008

Minimization of nozzle induces many flow losses in micro-propulsion system. In this study, we studied about thermal transpiration based new conceptual micro propulsion system to overcome these losses. Thermal transpiration device(Knudsen pump) having no moving parts can self-pump the gaseous propellant by temperature gradient only (cold to hot). We designed, fabricated the knudsen pump and analyzed pressure gradient efficiency of membrane according to Knudsen number under vacuum condition. In this paper, we compared mass flow rate of Knudsen pump by using different membrane type ; Polyimide and Hangi, Korean traditional paper.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.77-84
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• 2006

With the development of micro/nano spacecraft, concepts of micro propulsion are introduced for orbit transfer and drag compensation as well as attitude control. Micro solid propellant thruster has been attention as one of possible solution for micro thruster. In this paper, micro solid propellant thruster is introduced and research on basic components of a micro solid propellant thruster is reported. Micro Pt igniter was fabricated through negative patterning and quantitative effect of geometry was estimated. The characteristic of HTPB/AP solid propellant was investigated to measure the homing velocity. A combustion chamber was fabricated by means of anisotropic etching of photosensitive glass. Finally, micro solid propellant thrusters having various geometries were fabricated and tested.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.855-861
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• 2008

Micro wave rotor is expected to improve the performance of micro gas turbines drastically. In the present study, a micro wave rotor test rig was designed and built for micro gas turbines of 1-10 kW output range, and its test runs were carried out with cold air flow. In the previous experiments, the leakage loss had large influence on its operating condition. Therefore, abradable coating was applied on the end walls to achieve the operation with zero clearance for leakage reduction and its improvement on the operating condition is discussed in this study.

• 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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• 2004.03a
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• pp.597-600
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• 2004

Fabrication technique and performance test of catalytic micro propulsion are treated based on MEMS technology. This propulsion is designed to use hydrogen peroxide as liquid mono-propellant for attitude control of pica-satellite. The propellant is fed into the micro reactor channel and decomposed into hot gas yielding controllable thrust by catalyst. In order to increase the efficiency of the reaction that depends on the contact area of propellant and catalyst, porous surface formation on the channel accompanied by platinum particle deposition has been performed using H$_2$PtCl$_{6}$ solution as a precursor. Several thrusters were fabricated in different concentration of H$_2$PtCl$_{6}$ solution to determine the best quantity of Pt particles. For the comparison of the performance of each thruster, the volume of oxygen generated by the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide and the thrust were measured.red.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.278-281
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• 2005

This paper present a study of size effect on electrostatic colloid micro thruster. According to results about size effect experiments indicates that the proposed mechanism allows at less than 500 volt of operating voltage for the micro thruster.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.225-228
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• 2007

Micro solid propellant thruster is the most feasible for development with current MEMS. Basic components of micro solid propellant thruster are diverging nozzle, micro igniter, combustion chamber, and solid propellant. Micro nozzles and micro chambers were fabricated using photosensitive glass by anisotropic wet etching technique. Micro Pt heaters on glass membrane which ignited solid propellant were developed. Components of thruster were integrated. Successful ignition was observed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.147-150
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• 2003

The purpose of this research was to develope components of micro solid propellant thruster. Micro solid propellant thruster had four basic components: combustion chamber, nozzle, solid propellant and micro heater for ignition. A performance of micro heater and characteristic of solid propellant was investigated. Micro heater was fabricated by conventional MEMS process and Platinum layer was used for heating element. Effect of geometry parameters on micro heater was tested. The temperature responses of heater with respect to each parameters was compared for a given electrical power. The characteristic of solid propellant(HTPB/AP) was investigated to obtain burning velocity in small chamber. Additionally, a capacity of filling propellant with high viscosity in small chamber was checked to guarantee for the micro fabrication.