Advanced Flow Analysis Tools for Transient Solid Rocket Motor Simulations

The challenges of designing, developing, and fielding man-rated propulsion systems continue to increase as NASA's mission moves forward with evolving solid propulsion requirements. Recent developments in simulating solid rocket motor environments include Lagrangian particle tracking, particle combustion models, dynamic particle drag and breakup models, and two phase impingement phenomena. These advances are demonstrating success in numerically simulating solid motor environments, but evolutionary innovations leading to more realistic simulations are required. In particular, transient ignition phenomena, such as grain surface heating, initiation of surface reactions, and transition to steady burning, have not yet been addressed. Consideration of these transient flow aspects is extremely important for analyzing ignition delay, pressure buildup, nonuniform grain recession, and overall combustion behavior. Our research will combine existing two phase flow tools for solid motors with a grain heating and ignition model to produce software tools for simulating transient ignition phenomena and the subsequent flow development. These products will ultimately provide NASA with the important capability to simultaneously analyze solid propellant ignition and combustion, heat transfer, and grain burnback within a unified framework. We will demonstrate feasibility using a two phase solid propellant ignition model for a simple grain shape in the TRL range of 3-4.

The growing trend toward complex multi-phase analyses is opening significant new markets as more difficult problems can be addressed using advanced computational techniques. The ability to analyze more complex solid motor problems will allow industry to speed development of new products and streamline testing. Further enhancements to our modeling system will find application in the aerospace, automotive, environmental, and nuclear industries. The basic architecture of the software will remain the same while new plug-in models are developed to address niche markets. Our research partner ATK, a leading solid motor manufacturer, will help ensure that our research products maximize commercial potential.

This technology will provide NASA with an advanced analysis capability for the prediction of transient two phase flows in solid motors, including ignition phenomena and dynamic surface recession for a wide variety of propellants. Potential enhancements to the these tools include improved droplet/gas interface modeling for better statistical representations of particle laden flows, improved near-wall turbulence modeling, and extended model validation. The proposed methodology for ignition modeling in two phase solid motor flows is also well suited for extensions to additional multi-physics capabilities of commercial interest to NASA, including three dimensional coupled heat transfer within the solid propellant. Our research partner ATK, a leading manufacturer of solid rocket engines for NASA, will help ensure that our research products maximize commercial potential.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.