Date of Award:

12-2012

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Stephen A. Whitmore

Committee

Stephen A. Whitmore

Committee

David Geller

Committee

R. Rees Fullmer

Committee

Charles M. Swenson

Abstract

Extensive research in hybrid rocket motors has taken place at the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at USU (Utah State University) in the last several years. USU has one of the few facilities in the country capable of static-test firing rocket motors on-campus, which allows for fast-paced testing and development not available elsewhere. Research has involved investigating propulsion devices for a range of applications, including micro-satellite thrusters, hot-gas generators, and even jet-assisted takeoff kick motors. Hybrid motors have the advantage of safety over any other chemical propulsion. Since the fuel and oxidizer are stored seperately, they are relatively inert until combined in a hot-gas environment, making them ideal for applications where safety is a major concern, such as a secondary or tertiary payload for a major rocket launch. Development of this technology has been slow, as poorly-designed hybrid rocket motors are not competitive with other chemical propulsion technologies, but recent advances made at USU and other universities are beginning to show that hybrids do have a place in the market.

Hybrid research at USU has been ongoing for several years, with a budget of around $500,000 over the last three years. Most of this money has funded instrumentation and manufacturing materials, as well as financial support for the graduate student research team. This funding has come from multiple sources, including the Space Dynamics Lab (SDL), the State of Utah, and NASA. Many technical papers have been presented at technical conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals, with more on the way.

Part of the research into hybrid rockets involves 3D printing hybrid fuel grains to obtain complex geometries inside the motor to improve performance. This capability has given rise to the need to be able to model the geometric regression of these complex fuel grain structures as they burn. This model must be easy to develop for any fuel grain geometry, with the ability to model anything that is printable. Current methods of geometric regression are either custom-designed for each geometry, or are slow and unstable mathematical simulations. An alternative method proposed is to use image processing methods to regress a fuel grain. This means all that is required to model the burnback of fuel grain geometry is a picture of a cross-section of the fuel grain, which is trivial to obtain from a CAD file or other sources. This research will be an enabling technology for modeling new types of fuel grains that increase the performance of hybrid rocket motors, allowing them to have more competitive performance against other chemical propulsion technologies.

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This work made publicly available electronically on December 20, 2012.

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