• Sarou-Kanian, Vincent

Abstract

Because of its high energetic power, the combustion of aluminum particles in solid propellant rocket motors improves the efficiency of heavy-lift launcher as Ariane 5. Aluminum particles burn in a gaseous atmosphere essentially composed of H2O, CO2, N2, HCl, H2, and CO, at high pressure (P=60-70 atm) and high temperature (T>3000 K). In the present work, we have been particularly interested in the influence of the gaseous atmosphere on the different burning processes both in the gas-phase and at the aluminum droplet surface. An experimental set-up was developed in order to describe precisely, thanks to several analysis techniques (high-speed camera, pyrometry, spectrometry, SEM, nuclear activation) the combustion of aerodynamically levitated millimetric aluminum droplets in gas mixtures with compositions close to the propellant ones (H2O, CO2, N2). The main result is that each species plays a different role in the aluminum combustion. The water vapor has the biggest influence in the gas-phase process due to the production of hydrogen facilitating the heat and mass diffusion between the flame and the droplet. Nitrogen is essentially acting in surface reactions with the formation of aluminum nitride (AlN) and oxynitride (AlON) which may completely cover the droplet and stop the gas-phase combustion. Carbon dioxide has a double effect. On the one hand, CO2 burns in the flame, but it is less efficient than H2O because the heat and mass transfer properties are poorer for CO than for H2. On the other hand, a carbon dissolution phenomenon occurs in the aluminum droplet during burning which may reach saturation (20-25% molar) and involves a carbon rejection at the surface leading to the end of the gas-phase combustion.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• Carbon
• phase
• scanning electron microscopy
• aluminium
• laser emission spectroscopy
• Nitrogen
• nitride
• Hydrogen
• combustion
• activation
• spectrometry