Study of the Liquid Breakup Process in Solid Rocket Motor

摘要

In a solid rocket motor, when the aluminum based propellant combusts, the fuel is oxidized into alumina (Al2O3). It tends to agglomerate into molten droplets, impinge on the chamber walls, and then flow along the nozzle wall. Such agglomerates cause erosive damage. The focus of the current research is to characterize the agglomerate flow within the nozzle section by studying the breakup process of the liquid film that flows along the wall of a straight test channel while a relatively higher-speed gas moves over it. We have used an unsteady-flow Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes code to investigate the interaction of the liquid film flow with the gas flow. The rate of the wave breakup was characterized by introducing breakup length, Ohnesorge number, and Weber number for various flow conditions. Based on the volume fraction of the liquid, these three numbers are indicators of the level of liquid breakup. We summarize that a larger breakup length relates to a high breakup state of the liquid because the appearance of droplets contributes to a larger total boundary length during calculation.