Issues related to heterogeneous solid-propellant combustion

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, IL 61801, USA

Abstract

Over the past decade, a considerable amount of efforts has been dedicated to computational simulations of heterogeneous solid-propellant combustion. A variety of tools have emerged from those studies. The most important are the modeling of propellant morphology, homogenization, and an unsteady three-dimensional (3D) combustion code with complete coupling of the gas-phase combustion processes and the solidphase heat conduction across the unsteadily regressing nonplanar propellant surface. The combustion code is both parallel and scalable. These tools have been applied to the study of both nonaluminized and aluminized (conventional size Al and nano-Al) heterogeneous propellants. A number of important problems will be reviewed using these tools.