X‐Ray Visualization Measurement of Slurry Flow in Solid Propellant Casting

Simulated solid propellant slurry containing lead sphere tracers is experimentally cast into a double circular cylinder container. During the casting, the temperature and the pressure environment has been mimicked to an actual composite solid propellant casting of solid rocket motors. X‐rays are projected on to the slurry flow from two directions and penetration images are recorded by a flat panel detector and an X‐ray image intensifier. By suppressing the mutual interference of the X‐rays, the two‐directional X‐ray photography has been successfully conducted. Using the time series data of the X‐ray images from the two directions, the identification of each tracer particle in space and time has been done and their three‐dimensional paths have been computed. From these procedures, the flow field or the velocity field inside the slurry flow, which is invisible usually, has been estimated.