Study on Propellant Supply System for Small-scale Supersonic Flight Experiment Vehicle

(Development of Design Technology for LOX Supply System)

抄録

Abstract The Aerospace Plane Research Center of Muroran Institute of Technology is now developing the small-scale supersonic flight experiment vehicle. In this system, the application of propellant supplying system for Bioethanol and liquid oxygen (LOX) by pressurant gas has been under consideration. Since LOX is a cryogenic liquid, the pressurant gas is cooled by the liquid during discharge of the propellant. When the pressurized gas is cooled in the tank, the gas tends to shrink, and the amount of pressurized gas required to maintain the tank pressure increases. In the design of the propellant supply system, it is necessary to predict the consumption of pressurant gas to determine its amount to be carried. The pressurant gas consumption in the rocket propellant supply system is expressed as a collapse factor, and its empirical value is available. However, since the configuration of the aircraft tank system is different from that of a rocket, it is necessary to establish the technology for predicting the collapse factor of the present small-scale supersonic flight experiment vehicle. The final goal of this research is to develop a design technology for the propellant supply system of the cryogenic propellant tank for the small-scale supersonic flight experiment vehicle. The purpose of the present study was to understand the thermal and fluid behavior in the tank during discharge of the propellant with the pressurant gas supply. The thermal and fluid analysis in the tank was conducted using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and the verification tests of the propellant discharge by simulated cryogenic fluid with pressure control by pressurized gas were also conducted.