Thermochemical ablation of carbon/carbon composites with non-linear thermal conductivity

Abstract

Carbon/carbon composites have been typically used to protect a rocket nozzle from high temperature oxidizing gas. Based on the Fourier's law of heat conduction and the oxidizing ablation mechanism, the ablation model with non-linear thermal conductivity for a rocket nozzle is established in order to simulate the one-dimensional thermochemical ablation rate on the surface and the temperature distributions by using a written computer code. As the presented results indicate, the thermochemical ablation rate of a solid rocket nozzle calculated by using actual thermal conductivity, which is a function of temperature, is higher than that by a constant thermal conductivity, so the effect of thermal conductivity on the ablation rate of a solid rocket nozzle made of carbon/carbon composites cannot be neglected.