RATE-ENHANCED BURNING OF A PROPELLANT OBEYING A PYROLYSIS LAW

Abstract

It has been found that inserting wires in a solid propellant grain can increase the burning rate of the propellant by a factor of 5 or 10. The shape of the burning propellant surface be comes a series of cones, with their vertices centered on the wires. Heat conduction from the hot gas, along the highly thermally conductive wire, into the propellant, serves to maintain the conical shape of the surface. The phenomenon provides one useful method for obtaining in creased propellant burning rates in a motor that is subjected to various geometrical restrictions. An attempt is made to develop a theoretical under standing of the mechanism of this method of burning rate enhancement and to derive approximate formulae that may be used to obtain estimates of the degree of enhancement. A simple problem related to rate-enhanced burning in order to introduce the underlying character of the process is considered. The successful model of rate-enhanced burning is defined and discussed, and what appears to be the simplest conceivable analysis of rate-enhanced burning is presented.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1963
Accession Number
AD0336950

Entities

People

  • F. A. Williams

Organizations

  • Institute for Defense Analyses

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Adiabatic Flames
  • Boundary Layer
  • Burning Rate
  • Combustion
  • Equations
  • Geometry
  • Heat Capacity
  • Heat Loss
  • Heat Transfer
  • Heat Transfer Coefficients
  • Materials
  • Propellants
  • Solid Propellants
  • Specific Heat
  • Steady State
  • Thermal Conductivity
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Combustion and Flow Dynamics.
  • Electromagnetic Wave Scattering and Antenna Radiation Engineering
  • Mechanical Engineering/Mechanics of Materials.