Experimental Program to Assess Erosive Burning in Segmented Solid Rocket Motors

A 2 -D windowed combustor has been developed for the study of erosive burnin g in composite solid propellants. The modular design permits study of planar and slotted propellant configurations (as are present in segmented rocket motors) with adjustable port to -throat area ratios. The current focus is on a simple planar configurati on without optical access. Head, aft, and mid -motor pressure instrumentation is included in addition to thermocouples designed to sense local flame front approach time at head and aft ends of the grain. To date, the combustor has been fired 12 times and useful data are now being obtained. A ballistic element ballistic model has also been developed and has been used to analyze some of the tests using the classical Lenoir -Robillard erosive burning model. While more analysis is required, reasonable fits of the results are being obtained by suitable adjustment of the Lenoir -Robillard erosive burning parameters.