Passive Control of Low-Frequency Instability in Hybrid Rocket Combustion

Abstract

The occurrence of low-frequency instability (LFI) appears to be related to multiple interactions among many complex physical processes, such as vortex shedding, boundary-layer oscillation, and additional combustion in the post-combustion chamber. In this study, two combustion tests were conducted to suppress LFI and to examine which physical processes its occurrence was most sensitive. In the first test, two fuel inserts were used to modify the formation of a boundary layer, vortex shedding at the end of the fuel, and vortex impingement. In the second test, the fuel insert located at the front end was replaced with swirl injection. The first test was aimed at controlling and suppressing the initiation of LFI using fuel inserts, through which a small step appeared gradually due to differences in the regression rates of the two materials, i.e., polymethyl methacrylate and high-density polyethylene. The test results confirmed that (i) there are physical connections among several processes, such as the thermoacoustic coupling between p′and q′ and the oscillations of the upstream boundary flow, and (ii) LFI suppression is possible by disrupting or eliminating the connections among these physical processes. The second test was also aimed to control LFI while minimizing the deviation in combustion performance using proper swirl injection along with a fuel insert. Even when replaced by swirl injection, LFI suppression was still possible and showed reasonable combustion performance without causing too much deviation from the baseline in terms of the oxygen-to-fuel ratio and the fuel regression rate.

Keywords

• low-frequency instability
• swirl injection
• fuel insert
• thermoacoustic coupling
• hybrid rocket combustion