Fuel-Solid Propellant Boron Combustion

摘要

An apparatus for measurement of the permeability of oxygen gas through liquid boric oxide as a function to temperature was designed and built. Numerous difficulties were encountered in the course of this study, the most intractable being the uptake of oxygen by vessel wall materials at rates which swamped the rate of transport across the liquid boric oxide film separating vessels with differing initial oxygen levels, resulting in data with an unusably low signal-to-noise ration. A burner and two-dimensional nozzle device were designed (and the burner constructed) for study of condensation of boron oxides and hydroxides (all to boric oxide, with elimination of hydrogen and excess oxygen as required by stoichiometry consideration in the latter case) from dry and wet combustion atmospheres, with and without seeding with submicron refractory solid particles as heterogeneous nuclei. In addition, diagnostic procedures for uses in this condensation study (to be actually performed under a subsequent AFWAL/PORT contract) were selected from a wide array of potential candidates. A condensation model treating the flow of boron-loaded combustion product strams through a C-E nozzle with simultaneous treatment of finite-rate kinetics for gas-phase reactions and finite-rate nucleation and particle growth processes was developed. Several plausible modeling options as regards nucleation and particle growth processes were included in this analysis. Equation development, computer coding, and model check out were completed, and parametric studies with the model were initiated during the course of this program.