Further development of hybrid propulsion systems requires a deeper understanding of the complex physicochemical mechanisms governing its combustion performance. A tunable diode laser absorption tomography (TDLAT) method was developed for investigating the thermochemical processes at the nozzle exit of an oxygen/Poly Methyl MethAcrylate (PMMA) hybrid rocket motor. Firing tests were conducted for different oxidizer mass fluxes ranging from 2.73 to 3.51 g/ (cm2·s). A distributed feedback (DFB) laser was tuned to cover three H2O absorption lines near 2.5 μm, using scanned-wavelength direct absorption (DA) mode with 2.0 kHz repetition rate. Under an assumption of cylindrical symmetry, a Radon transformation was applied to yield radially- and time- resolved absorption coefficient, from which the radial distribution of temperature and H2O partial pressure were reconstructed. Based on the Taylor series method (TSM), measurement uncertainty was analyzed in detail considering line-strength uncertainty, Voigt fitting residuals and Radon transformation. Finally, the radial distribution and dynamic variations of both temperature and H2O partial pressure were obtained in all firing tests, both the constructed results show measurement sensitivity to chemical kinetic progress and oxidizer mass flux changes. Our experimental results highlight the capability of TDLAT to characterize combustion processes of hybrid rocket motors.
A mid-infrared TDLAS sensor near 2.5μm was designed for time-resolved measurements of temperature and water vapor partial pressure at the nozzle exit of a laboratory-scale hybrid rocket motor. Several previously used H2O transitions within 2.4-2.9μm were thoroughly investigated, and a line-pair containing three transitions (4029.52 cm-1 , 4030.51 cm-1 and 4030.73 cm-1 ) was selected for the optimal overall properties like strong absorbance, sufficient temperature sensitivity, single laser scan, high immunity from the ambient H2O transitions and low measurement uncertainty affected by temperature over the range of 1500K-2500K. Firing tests were conducted on an oxygen/paraffin-fueled hybrid rocket motor operating at oxygen/fuel ratios (O/Fs) of 3.10, 2.77 and 2.88, corresponding to average combustion pressures of 1.91MPa, 2.09MPa and 2.38MPa. A distributed feedback (DFB) laser tuned repetitively at 2kHz was used as the light source, and simultaneously the transmitted spectra were detected at a 2MHz sampling rate. Finally, a 4.5ms time-scale variations of temperature and H2O partial pressure were captured by TDLAS sensor. Uncertainty analysis was made in detail based on average temperature (1929.8K, 1926.5K, and 1990.7K) and average H2O partial pressure (0.237MPa, 0.253MPa, and 0.285MPa), leading to temperature uncertainty of around 2.24% and partial pressure uncertainties of around 3.80%, 3.79% and 4.04% respectively. The time-resolved measurement results and small measurement uncertaintiesindicate that TDLAS has the potential to evaluate the combustion performance of hybrid rocket motor
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