Design and testing of a paraffin-based 1000 N HRE breadboard

Abstract

The paper presents some relevant achievements in hybrid rocket propulsion carried out by the Italian Aerospace Research Centre. On the basis of the experimental results obtained on a 200 N thrust class engine, a 1000 N class breadboard, fed with gaseous oxygen coupled with a paraffin-based fuel grain, was designed and experimentally tested in different conditions. The breadboard exhibited a stable combustion in all the firing test conditions; the testing campaign allowed the acquisition of different experimental data, as pre and post-combustion chamber pressure, throat material temperature, pre-combustion chamber temperature. The new breadboard was characterized by higher measured regression rate values with respect to corresponding data obtained with the smaller scale one, highlighting that the oxidizer mass flux is not the only operating quantity affecting the fuel consumption behavior, which could be also influenced by scale parameters, such as the grain port diameter, and other operating conditions, such as the mixture ratio.