Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

Access to space and suborbital flights are of critical importance to a broad range of fields of science andx000D
industry. The emergence of new technologies has allowed new actors to develop smaller and morex000D
cost-effective satellites to perform the same missions. However, due to the lack of operational dedicatedx000D
launchers, microsatellites are often constrained to launch as secondary payloads alongside larger satellites.x000D
Chemical propulsion in the aerospace sector is currently dominated by two rocket design paradigms,x000D
differentiated by the phases of the reactants used, solid in one case and either liquid of gaseous in the other.x000D
Our partner Reaction Dynamics Lab has been pioneering a novel type of rocket propulsion technology,x000D
experimentally demonstrated recently using a static fire test. Hybrid rocket engines, where liquid or gaseousx000D
oxidizer are stored separately from the solid fuel, can bring key advantages with regards to safety withoutx000D
compromising performance. When solid fuels rubbers are used for the fuel matrix in hybrid rocket motors, thex000D
regression rate is very low compared to solid rockets. This drawback has been partially addressed by thex000D
introduction of the concept of liquefying solid fuels matrix. It is anticipated that the combustion efficiency ofx000D
these motord will depend on the flow properties of the melted fuel, but the characteristics of this relationshipx000D
remained to be identified. The investigation that will be supported by this grant is aimed at identifying thex000D
effects of the melted fuel rheological properties on the combustion efficiency of hybrid rocket motors.