DIAGNOSTICS DEVELOPMENT FOR THE CHARACTERIZATION OF LIQUID FUEL ROCKET ENGINE INJECTOR ATOMIZATION

DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF ADVANCE SPRAY DIAGNOSTICS FOR THE CHARACTERIZATION OF LIQUID ROCKET FUEL INJECTORS IS PROPOSED. CURRENTLY, MODELLING EFFORTS FOR THE PREDICTION OF FUEL AND OXIDIZER ATOMIZATION, MIXING, AND REACTION ARE HAMPERED BY THE UNAVAILABILITY OF RELIABLE EXPERIMENTAL DATA. UNDER THIS PROGRAM, THE PHASE/DOPPLER PARTICLE ANALYZER (P/DPA) WILL BE EVALUATED AS A MEANS FOR PROVIDING DROP SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS, SIZE-VELOCITY CORRELATIONS,AND MASSFLUX MEASUREMENTS OF SPRAYS PRODUCED BY LIQUID ROCKET FUEL INJECTORS. CRITICAL QUESTIONS ON THE SYSTEM PERFORMANCE IN THESE HIGH DROP NUMBER DENSITY ENVIRONMENTS WILL BE ADDRESSED. EVALUATIONS WILL CONSIST OF COMPARISONS OF THE MEASURED NUMBER DENSITIES WITH EXTINCTION DATA AND MASS FLUXWITH SAMPLING PROBE RESULTS. TECHNIQUES FOR OVERCOMING POSSIBLE PROBLEMS WITH THE HIGH PARTICLE NUMBER DENSITIES WILL BE TESTED. METHODOLOGIES FOR DISCRIMINATING FUEL DROPS FROM OXIDIZER DROPS WILL BE DEVELOPED AND TESTED UNDER THE PHASE I PROGRAM. THE PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTS WILL BE CONDUCTED IN NONREACTING FLOWS. EXPERIMENTS WILL ALSO BE CONDUCTED IN SPRAY FLAMES TO DEMONSTRATE THE MEASUREMENT CAPABILITY. THESE REACTING FLOWS WILL BE DESIGNED TO SIMULATE THE MODEL ROCKET ENGINE MEASUREMENT ENVIRONMENT.