Diameter and position effect determination of diaphragm on hybrid rocket motor.

This study is aimed to determine and better reveal the mixture enhancement and regression rate distribution of hybrid rocket motor with diaphragm by numerical approach. A numerical model based on the computational fluid dynamics software is built to simulate the flow and combustion inside the motor. Four firing tests of the motor, including one without diaphragm and three with diaphragm, are conducted on a standard experimental system and also used as a reference for numerical simulation, the consistency between the simulation and experiment demonstrates that the numerical approach is an effective method to study the diaphragm effect on the motor performance. The flow field characteristic and regression rate distribution inside the hybrid rocket motor are then calculated to analyze the effect of position and diameter of the diaphragm. The results indicate that the diaphragm almost have no effect on the regression rate before it. However, the regression rate after the diaphragm has a strong dependence on the position and diameter of the diaphragm. As the diameter decreases and the position moves backward, the regression rate increases larger and larger, this is mainly due to the augmentation of the eddy generated by the diaphragm, which enhances the heat feedback transferred to the grain surface. When the diameter of diaphragm located at middle of grain decreases from 50 mm to 20 mm, regression rate is increased from 0.30 mm/s to 0.57 mm/s. The use of the diaphragm does cause a combustion efficiency improvement; the maximum combustion efficiency is enhanced to 98.9% from lower than 90% of the motor with no diaphragm. The increasing amplitude displays a square relation with the diameter decrease, since the entrainment of the eddy make the reactants mix sufficiently to release more energy inside the motor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]