[AR] Re: Combustion instability and injector patterns
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 14:39:36 -0500 (EST)
On Mon, 4 Jan 2016, Andrew Burns wrote:
[pintles] are so far different to the normal 'a hell of a lot of tiny
holes (or tubes) spread over a big flat plate' approach and yet they can
still be made to work and have their own specific advantages. Kinda
makes you wonder what else is out there that might also be a significant
deviation from the norm but also a viable approach.
One example I ran across a while back: the injector on the Viking engine
(N2O4/UDMH main engine of Arianes 1-4) is not a plate at all, but a ring
around the upper sidewall of the chamber.
That propellant combination burns cooler than LOX-based combinations, and
this approach might not work so well for them (Viking also was not
regeneratively cooled -- just film cooling). It's still noteworthy just
because it's so different from orthodox practice.
I expect that one reason why it's not better known is that most of the
technical papers on it are in French! Rocketeers from many other
countries will publish in English even if it's not the language the work
was done in, but the French are often reluctant to do that. (I wish my
French was better -- I can stumble through a technical paper on a familiar
topic, like rocket engines, but I'm sure I miss the fine points, and the
French have done some interesting engines.)
One decent English-language description of early-Ariane propulsion is in
"Rocket and Spacecraft Propulsion", by M.J. Turner, Springer, 2000, which
has a number of interesting bits despite being a rather lightweight
introductory book overall. (Best to find it in a library, it's
ridiculously expensive new.)
Henry
Other related posts:
