Experimental Investigation of Boron-Laden Paraffin Wax and Hydroxyl-Terminated Polybutadiene (Htpb) Based Solid Fuel for Ducted Rocket Application

Abstract

An experimental investigation has been conducted on the regression and combustion performance of different solid fuels such as pure paraffin wax, hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB), paraffin wax loaded with 10% boron particles, and HTPB loaded with 10% boron particles using a lab-scale static ducted rocket. In this setup, a hybrid gas generator has been employed where gaseous oxygen is used as an oxidizer. The main effort in this paper lies in the development of the ducted rocket setup. Some initial experiments have been conducted to get some comparative assessment of the regression rate, chamber pressure, thrust, and emission spectra of the plume coming out of the nozzle. The results show that 10% boron-laden paraffin wax solid fuel has a marginally lower regression rate comparatively but it is shown that boron is taking part in combustion which could lead to higher performance. For the case of HTPB-based fuel both the cases (with and without boron) do not show any appreciable change in regression rate; however, the chamber pressure and thrust increased marginally for the case of boron-laden HTPB fuel. Additionally, the color picture of the exhaust plume and spectroscopy data confirms the ignition/combustion of boron particles. © 2023, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.