An investigation of hybrid rocket motor design for space mission.

Trends in Hybrid Propulsion System (HPS) development for space applications are moving towards achieving low cost, safety, flexibility of design and understanding combustion phenomena. In the stage of preliminary design, a comparison between experimental and simulation via software programs is needed. To this end, a mathematical model has been constructed and simulated using FORTRAN-77 to predict the chamber pressure, characteristic exhaust velocity, regression rate boundary layer parameters (i.e. flame height, boundary layer thickness, velocity ratio and flame position) and fuel mass flow rate with firing time through fuel grain length. The validity of the computer program, has been tested by comparing calculated and collected measured data from various references and has shown good agreement. The effect of various parameters has been studied and the results are investigated in the form of two and three a dimensional graphs for quick and easy analysis. The presented code can be considered as a first step towards a powerful tool for selecting important parameters for designing HPS's, resulting in minimising the amount of experimental required