Convective Ignition of Propellant Cylinders in a Developing Cross-Flow Field.

Abstract

The sensitivities of ignition delay time and site to the ambient conditions (i.e., flow velocity, pressure, temperature and gas composition) were investigated under high heat flux conditions (e.g., 100 cal/cm2-s). A shock tunnel was used to provide up to 20 ms of flowing heated gas at: 1 to 22 mpa, 1800 to 2300 k, 5 to 300 m/s. test gases were 100%N2. 10%O2/90%N2 and 50%O2/50%N2. Instrumentation included radiation detectors, high-speed shadowgraph sequences, pressure probes and heat flux gauges. Most of the tests were conducted with nitrocellulose-based propellants. The effect of high heating rates accompanying the initial flow transients and boundary layer development were very prominent in producing sub-millisecond ignition delays for oxygen-containing flows. Indeed, during their brief period (on the order of 0.2 ms) the heat fluxes are 4 to 5 times higher than corresponding well developed flow values. Flame blow-off occurred for high Reynolds numbers (e.g., 16,000), low free stream oxygen content flows. Depending on the flow conditions first ignition occurred distinctly at the leading edge, trailing edge or at the flow separation region. Compared to triple-based propellant, single-based and double-based propellants ignited more rapidly in oxygen-containing flows. The experimental results indicate clearly that for the range of ambient conditions tested, the ignition is a gas phase process. The ignition processes in nonsteady reactive boundary layer flows were analyzed for the front stagnation flow region. The solution includes the boundary layer development and the transition and quasi-steady burning. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1980
Accession Number
ADA091852

Entities

People

  • Aviezer Birk
  • Leonard H. Caveny

Organizations

  • Princeton University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundary Layer
  • Chemical Reactions
  • Chemical Synthesis
  • Chemistry
  • Composite Propellants
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Double Base Propellants
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Heat Transfer
  • Materials Laboratories
  • Materials Processing
  • Materials Science
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Rocket Engines
  • Thermal Conductivity
  • Turbulent Mixing

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Combustion and Flow Dynamics.
  • Combustion science or combustion engineering.
  • Rocket Propulsion.