EFFECT OF DIFFERENT THERMAL CURE CYCLES ON THE PROPELLANT CURING OF SOLID ROCKET MOTOR: A NUMERICAL STUDY

摘要

Thermal cure cycle plays an important role in realizing the defect free propellant grains of solid propellant rocket motors. Selection of cure cycle depends on the attainment of uniform temperature in the propellant grain for achieving proper curing to get the specified mechanical properties. Propellant curing process is a complex thermo-chemical phenomenon and the effect of heat generation is considered by coupling the heat transfer and chemical kinetics. An implicit finite element code is developed based on Galerkin's weighted residual finite element formulation to estimate the temperature profile history in the curing process. The ordinary differential equation for chemical kinetics is solved using Runge-Kutta fourth order time stepping scheme. The focus of present numerical analysis is to study the effect of different thermal curing cycles on the transient thermal response and degree of cure in the propellant grain for obtaining the defect free propellant grain.