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Gaseous, Liquid, and Gelled Propellant Hypergolic Reaction Mechanisms

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Army
Contract: W911NF-06-C-0126
Agency Tracking Number: A064-001-0235
Amount: $100,000.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: STTR
Solicitation Topic Code: A06-T001
Solicitation Number: N/A
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2006
Award Year: 2006
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2006-08-07
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2007-02-03
Small Business Information
Space Center, 1212 Fourier Drive
Madison, WI 53717
United States
DUNS: 196894869
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Millicent Coil
 (608) 827-5000
 coilm@orbitec.com
Business Contact
 Eric Rice
Title: President/CEO
Phone: (608) 827-5000
Email: ricee@orbitec.com
Research Institution
 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV.
 Lester K Su
 
Department of Mechanical Eng.
Baltimore, MD 21218
United States

 (410) 516-8637
 Nonprofit College or University
Abstract

ORBITEC proposes a parallel computational and experimental effort to understand the phenomena underlying hypergolic ignition of gelled propellants. Gelled hypergolic propellants offer many benefits to modern propulsion systems. They offer good insensitive munitions characteristics and versatile performance. However, gelled propellants typically exhibit longer ignition delays than liquid propellants. In order to realize their advantages without risking potential catastrophic failures associated with long delays, these ignition issues must be understood and overcome. The proposed program will break the complex ignition delay behavior into fundamental problems and devise laboratory and modeling experiments to address each. In each case, the experiments will assay the effect of the gellant on the particular phenomenon. The Phase I work will accomplish the majority of the modeling and will include exploratory laboratory experiments to select diagnostics appropriate for investigating each selected process. The Phase II program will conduct these experiments and measure ignition delays in a multiple impinging stream vortex injection (MISVI) thrust chamber. Via a suite of analytical techniques, the proposed work will elucidate each of the fundamental phenomena along the path to ignition, yielding an understanding of each process, the competition among them, the effect of the gellants, and the resulting regimes of ignition.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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