Performance sensitivity study on a blowdown nitrous oxide paraffin wax hybrid sounding rocket

Explicit Modelling of the Ignition Transient Structural Response of a Paraffin Wax Hybrid Rocket Motor Fuel Grain

“…Design and test data of rocket motors is necessary to evaluate the use of the defined model parameters, and thus the authors based such inputs on design characteristics associated with sounding rockets of the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Phoenix Hybrid Sounding Rocket Program (Balmogim et al 2015;Genevieve et al 2012Genevieve et al , 2015Leverone et al 2013Leverone et al , 2019. These vehicles are at varying stages of development and are designed with a large variety of desired apogees and research outcomes.…”

“…These scenarios included actual pressure data from available hot-fire tests, the modelled theoretical pressure data based on the HYROPS software estimations (including an estimated pressure spike), and a reduced pressure profile where the chamber pressure does not exceed the design pressure (excluding the pressure spike). All pressure profiles are available in references Balmogim et al (2015), Genevieve et al (2012Genevieve et al ( , 2015 and Leverone et al (2013Leverone et al ( , 2019. It is important to note that the pressure profiles and start-up transients greatly affect the ability of paraffin wax fuel grains to withstand the loads applied, as the material is noticeably strain-rate dependent.…”

“…The propellant combination of interest in this research is SASOL 0907 paraffin wax as fuel with nitrous oxide as the oxidiser. This propellant combination is utilised as the primary propulsion mechanism for the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Phoenix Hybrid Sounding Rocket Program (Balmogim et al 2015;Genevieve et al 2012Genevieve et al , 2015Leverone et al 2013Leverone et al , 2019. Additionally, the Phoenix program plans to utilise aluminium powder additives in the paraffin wax at varying percentages to improve the performance and density specific impulse of the motors (Maharaj et al 2016).…”

Study on the Flame Acceleration and Transition from Deflagration to Detonation of N2O/C2H4/CO2

“…Compared with monopropellant hydrazine and its derivatives, NOFBX can offer high specific impulse, low cost, wide availability and environmental friendliness [6,16,17]. Moreover, they have high vapor pressure at ambient tem-perature and self-pressurizing capability applicable to a wide range of space vehicle [18].…”