You are here

Nonlinear Combustion Stability Prediction of Solid Rocket Motors

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Navy
Contract: N68936-02-C-0018
Agency Tracking Number: N01-156-01
Amount: $99,915.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: N/A
Solicitation Number: N/A
Timeline
Solicitation Year: N/A
Award Year: 2002
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): N/A
Award End Date (Contract End Date): N/A
Small Business Information
1802 N. Carson Street, Suite 200
Carson City, NV 89701
United States
DUNS: 083152975
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Jonathan French
 Senior Engineer
 (775) 882-1966
 jon@seainc.com
Business Contact
 Douglas Coats
Title: President
Phone: (775) 882-1966
Email: doug@seainc.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

"Software & Engineering Associates, Inc., proposes to develop a new tool to analyze solid rocket motor combustion stability which will predict for an unstable motor the combustion chamber's maximum over-pressurization. When a rocket motor experiencescombustion instability, it often does not experience a catastrophic failure, but a temporary amplitude limited pressure fluctuation. If the magnitude of the fluctuation can be predicted, one can then determine if it is sufficiently low as to be ignored,or if it will damage the payload or cause unacceptable flight variations. The current stability analysis code examines each of the combustion chamber's acoustic modes separately. As such, it cannot model the transfer of energy between unstable and stableacoustic modes, transfers which can act to dampen the unstable mode, resulting in an amplitude limited pressure fluctuation (limit cycle). A new non-linear analysis technique developed at Cal Tech compares a given unstable acoustic mode with the othermodes in the system, and from that predicts the maximum amplitude of the over-pressurization. The focus of this Phase I SBIR will be to identify the algorithms and inputs required to implement a non-linear stability analysis into the current solid rocketmotor combustion stability code. This research will result in an innovative design tool to predict combustion instability amplitudes of an unstable solid rocket motor during the design phase

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

US Flag An Official Website of the United States Government